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Class 
Book 



M 545 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Kht peautp of ^elf=Control 



DE. J. R. MILLEE'S BOOKS 



A Heart Garden 
Beauty of Every Day 
Beauty of Self-Control 
Bethlehem to Olivet 
Building of Character 
Come ye Apart 
Dr. Miller's Year Book 
Evening Thoughts 
Every Day of Life 
Finding the Way 
For the Best Things 
Gate Beautiful 
Glimpses through Life's 
Windows 

Go FORW^ARD 

Golden Gate of Prayer 

Hidden Life 

BOOKLETS 



Joy of Service 
Learning to Love 
Lesson of Love 
Making the Most of Life 
Ministry of Comfort 
Morning Thoughts 
Personal Friendships of 

Jesus 
Silent Times 
Story of a Busy Life 
Strength and Beauty 
Things to Live For 
Upper Currents 
When the Song Begins 
Wider Life 
Young People's Problems 



Beauty of Kindness 



Marriage Altar 



Blessing of Cheerfulness Mary of Bethany 



By the Still Waters 

Christmas Making 

Cure for Care 

Face of the Master 

Gentle Heart 

Girls : Faults and Ideals 



Master's Friendships 
Secret of Gladness 
Secrets of Happy Home 

Life 
Summer Gathering 
To-day and To-morrow 



Glimpses of the Heavenly Transfigured Life 



Life 
How? When? Where? 
In Perfect Peace 
Inner Life 
Loving my Neighbor 



Turning Northward 
Unto the Hills 
Young Men: Faults and 
Ideals 



THOMAS Y. OEOWELL COMPANY 



^tmtp of telecontrol 



BY 

J. R. MILLER 

AUTHOR OF "silent TIMES,'' '* MAKING THE MOST OF 
LIFE," "upper currents," ETC. 



** Self -reverence 9 self-knowledge, self-control" 



THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 
• PUBLISHERS 



y^'fi^^ 



Copyright, 1911 
By Thomas Y. Crowell Company 



Published September, 1911 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 



CI.A295732 



AUTHOR'S WORD 



1 HE writer has no excuse for sending out 
another volume save that a good many people 
are Mnd enough to say that his books help them. 
So long as this is true it would seem to be worth 
while to write them, A good many of us need 
to be cheered and encouraged in order that we 
may do our best in duty and struggle. We can 
do nothing better therefore in life than to be 
encouragers of othe7's and helpers in little ways 
as we go on in our pilgrimage. 

J. R. M. 
Philadelphia, U. S.A, 



TITLES OF CHAPTERS 



I. The Beauty of Self-Control Page 1 

II. The Work of the Plow 15 

III. Finding our Duties 29 

IV. Into the Right Hands 45 
V. Living unto God 59 

VI. The Indispensable Christ 71 

VII. The One Who Stands By 85 

VIII. Love's Best at Hojvie 97 

IX. What about Bad Temper? 113 

X. The Engagement Ring 127 

XI. What Christ's Friendship Means 143 

XII. People as Means of Grace 157 

XIII. What Christ is to Me 173 

XIV. Our Unanswered Prayers 189 
XV. The Outflow of Song 203 

XVI. Seeing the Sunny Side 217 

XVII. The Story of the Folded Hands 231 

XVIII. Comfort for Tired Feet 245 

XIX. The Power of the Risen Lord 259 

XX. Coming to the End 273 



Cl^e l^eatttt of ^elf* Control 



• Sentinel at the loose-swung door of my impetuous lips. 
Guard close to-day I Make sure no word unjust or cruel slips 
In anger forth, by folly spurred or armed with envys whips; 
Keep clear the way to-day.^' 

Arnold Townsend, in ** The Outlook^" 



Cl^e 'Ztantv of ^elf* Control 




LL life should be beautiful. 

God is a God of beauty. 

He never made anything 

that was not beautiful. St. 

Paul, in designating certain 
qualities of character which every Christian 
should strive to attain, names " whatsoever 
things are lovely." Nothing that is unlovely 
should be allowed in the life of any Christian. 
We should always strive to be beautiful in 
life. F. W. Farrar says, " There is but one 
failure ; that is, not to be true to the best one 
knows." O. S. Harden names as signs of de- 
terioration in character, " when you are sat- 
isfied with mediocrity, when commonness does 
not trouble you, when a shghted job does not 
haunt you." 

Self-control is one of the finest things in 
any life. It is not a single element in char- 
acter, but something that has to do with all 

[3] 



Cl^e "Beauti? of ^elf^Conttol 

the elements. It binds them all together in 
one. In one of St. PauPs clusters of the 
qualities of a noble character, he names love, 
joy, peace, long-suifering, kindness, goodness, 
faithfulness, meekness, ending with self-con- 
trol. Self-control is self-mastery. It is 
kingship over all life. At the center of your 
being sits yourself. Your seat ought to be a 
throne. If you are not in control, if there 
are any forces in your nature that are unruly, 
that do not acknowledge your sway, you are 
not the king you should be. Part of your 
kingdom is in insurrection. The strength of 
your life is divided. The strong man is he 
whose whole being is subject to him. 

Perfect self-control is ideal life. You are 
like a man driving a team of spirited horses. 
So long as he sits on the driver's seat and the 
horses obey him implicitly, acknowledging the 
slightest pressure upon the lines, all is well. 
But if the animals become restive, begin to 
champ on the bits, and cease to obey the 
driver's impulse, and then dash away from 
his guidance, he has lost his control, A man 

[4] 



Ci^e I3eautt of telecontrol 

has self-control when he sits in his place and 
has his hands on all the reins of his life. He 
is kingly when he has complete mastery of his 
temper, his speech, his feelings, his appetites ; 
when he can be quiet under injury and wrong, 
hurt to the quick but showing no sign, patient 
and still under severe provocation; when he 
can stand amid temptations and not yield to 
them. 

A man when insulted may break out into a 
passion of anger, and become a very " son of 
thunder " in the vehemence of his rage. But 
that is not strength. The man who when 
treated unjustly remains silent, answers not 
a word, with cheeks white, yet restraining 
himself, showing no resentment, but keeping 
love in his heart, is the strong man. The 
|Wise Man puts it thus: 

**He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; 
And he that ruleth his spirit, than he that taketh a city." 

There are men who rule other men and 
cannot rule themselves. They are victori- 
ous in battle, but they cannot control their 

[5] 



Cl^e OBeautt of ^clf^Conttol 

own temper, restrain their own speech, or 
hold in calm quiet their own spirits. There 
is nothing beautiful in such a life. Nothing 
more effectually mars a life than fretfulness, 
discontent, worry, impatience. Nothing is 
more pitiful than a life made to be strong, 
kingly, noble, cahn, peaceful, but which is, in- 
stead, the play of every excitement, every 
temper, every resentment, every appetite 
and passion. Some one says, " Alexan- 
der conquered all the world, except — 
Alexander." 

Not only is self-control strong — it is also 
beautiful. Anger is not beautiful. Ungov- 
erned temper is not lovely. Rage is demonic. 
But a spirit calm, strong, and unflustered, 
amid storms of feeling and all manner of dis- 
turbing emotions, is sublime in its beauty. 
" A temper under control, a heart subdued 
into tenderness and patience, a voice cheer- 
ful with hope, and a countenance bright with 
kindness, are invaluable possessions to any 



man or woman.'' 



The Bible furnishes examples of self-con- 
[6] 



Cl^e TStmtv of ^elf Control 

trol. One is in the story of King Saul's 
anointing. The people received him with 
great enthusiasm. " All the people shouted, 
and said, Long live the King." He then 
went to his house, and there went with him 
the host. But there were a few who refused 
to shout. " Certain worthless fellows said, 
How shall this man save us? And they de- 
spised him, and brought him no present." 
Saul might have resented the insult offered 
him, for he was king now, and might have 
slain those who refused to receive him; but 
he restrained himself and spoke not a word. 
Amid the sneers and scoffs of these worthless 
men he was as though he heard nothing of all 
they said. He held his peace. 

We are apt to resent insults and retaliate 
when others do us evil. But the Christian 
way is either not to speak at all, or to give 
the soft answer that turneth away wrath. 
The way to conquer an enemy is to treat him 
with kindness. Ignoring slights and quietly 
going on with love's duty, returning kindness 
for unkindness, is the way to get the true 

[7] 



Ci^e istautv of ^elf^Control 

victory. The best answer to sneers, scoffs, 
and abuse is a life of persistent patience 
and gentleness. 

It is in Jesus that we have the finest illus- 
trations of self-control, as of all noble quali- 
ties. The tongue is the hardest of all the 
members of the body to control. No man 
can tame it, says St. James. Yet Jesus had 
perfect mastery over his tongue. He never 
said a word that he would better not have 
said. He never spoke unadvisedly. When 
bitterly assailed by enemies, when they 
sought to catch him in his words, when they 
tried by false accusations to make him speak 
angrily, he held his peace and said not a word. 
Not only did he refrain from hasty and ill- 
tempered speech, but he kept his spirit in 
control. Some men can keep* silence with 
their lips though in their hearts the fire burns 
hotly ; but Jesus kept love in his heart under 
all provocation. He was master of his 
thoughts and feelings. He never grew angry 
or bitter. When he was reviled he reviled 
not again; when he was hated he loved on; 

[8] 



Cl^e peautt of ^eU*Control 

when nails were driven through his hands the 
blood from his wounds became the blood of re- 
demption. Nor was it weakness in Jesus that 
kept him silent under men's reproaches and 
revilings, and under all injuries and insults. 
There was no moment when he could not 
have summoned legions of angels to defend 
him and to strike down his persecutors. He 
voluntarily accepted wrong when he could 
have resisted. He never lifted a finger on 
his own behalf, though he could have crushed 
his enemies. He returned kindness for un- 
kindness. Thus he set us the example of 
patient endurance of wrong, of silent suffer- 
ing, rather than angry accusation. 

In his words, also, Christ teaches us this 
lesson of self-control. Meekness is one of 
the Beatitudes. It is the ripe fruit of re- 
straint under insult and wrong. " Accustom 
yourself to injustice " was the counsel of an 
English preacher. It is not easy to accept 
such teaching. We do not like to be treated 
unjustly. We can learn to endure a good 
many other things and still keep patient and 

[9] 



Cl^e "Beautt of ^elf^Control 

sweet. But to endure injustice seems to be 
beyond the " seventy times seven " included 
in our Lord's measurement of forgiving. 
Yet it is not beyond the limit of the law 
of love. Certainly the Master in his own 
life accustomed himself to injustice. He 
was silent even to this phase of wrong, 
and he leaves the lesson of his example 
to us. 

The beauty of self-control! It is always 
beautiful, and the lack of it is always a blem- 
ish. A lovely face which has won us by its 
grace instantly loses its charm and winsome- 
ness when in some excitement bad temper 
breaks out. An angry countenance is dis- 
figuring. It hides the angel and reveals the 
demon. Self-control gives calmness and 
poise. It should be practiced not only on 
great occasions but on the smallest. A hun- 
dred times a day it will save us from weak- 
ness and fluster and make us strong and 
quiet. It is the outcome of peace. If the 
heart be still and quiet with the peace of 
Christ, the whole life is under heavenly 

[10] 



Ci^e TStautv of ^elf* Control 

guard. The king is on his throne and there 
is no misrule anywhere. 

How can we get this self-control which 
means so much to our lives? It is essential 
if we would live beautifully. We are weak 
without it. 

"Unless above himself he can 
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!" 

How can we get the mastery over our- 
selves? It is not attained by a mere resolve. 
We cannot simply assert our self-mastery 
and then have it. We cannot put self on the 
throne by a mere proclamation. It is an 
achievement which must be won by ourselves 
and won by degrees. It is a lesson which 
must be learned, a long lesson which it takes 
many days to learn. As Lowell says: 

" Beauty and truth and all that these contain 
Drop not like ripened fruit about our feet; 
We climb to them through years of sweat and pain." 

We need divine help in learning the lesson. 
Yet we must be diligent in doing our part. 
God helps those who help themselves. When 
we strive to be calm and self-controlled he 

[11] 



Cl^e I3eautt of telecontrol 

puts his own strength into our heart. Then 
we shall find ourselves growing strong and 
gaining in self-mastery. The attainment 
will come slowly. 

But however long it may take us to reach 
this heavenly achievement we should never 
be content until we have reached it. This is 
the sum of all learning and experience. It 
is the completeness of all spiritual culture. 
The man in us is only part a man while 
we are not master of ourselves. We are in 
grave peril while any weak hour we may lose 
our kingliness and be cast down. It took 
Moses forty years to learn self-control, and 
he did not learn it in the world's universities ; 
it was only when God was his teacher and his 
school was in the desert that he mastered it. 
Then in a sad, unwatched moment he lost his 
kingly power for an instant and spoke a few 
words unadvisedly, and failed and could not 
finish his work. 

Think what the want of self-control is 
costing men continually! One moment's 
dropping of the reins and a wrong de- 

[12] 



Ci^e QBeautt of ^elf-Control 

cision is made, a temptation is accepted, 

a battle is lost, and a splendid life lies 

in ruin. Let us achieve the grace of self- 
control. 



[13] 



Ci^e moxfi of ti^e l^lotJj 



**Ra{n, rain 
Beating against the pane. 
How endlessly it pours 
Out of doors 

From a blackened sky; — 
/ wonder why! 

" Flowers, flowers 
Upspringing after showers. 
Blossoming fresh and fair 

Everywhere; — 
Ah, God has explained 

Why it rained! '* 



E, W. F. 



II 



Ci^e motk of ti^e l^lotD 




HE figure of plowing, much 
used in the Bible, is very 
suggestive. The initial 
work in making men is plow- 
work. Human hearts are 
hard, and the first implement to go over them 
must be a plow, that they may be broken 
up and softened. In our Lord's parable 
some seeds fell on the trodden wayside. The 
soil was good — it was the same as that which, 
in another part of the field yielded a hundred- 
fold — but it was hard. It had been long a 
roadway across the field and thousands of 
feet had gone over it, treading it down. 
There was no use in sowing seed upon it, for 
the ground would not receive it, and, lying 
upon the hardened surface, the birds in eager 
quest for food would pick it off. The only 
way to make anything of this trodden road- 
side was to have it broken up by the plow. 

[17] 



Ci^e OBeautt of telecontrol 

The first work of Christ in many lives is 
plowing. The lives have not been cultivated. 
They have been left untilled. Or, like the 
wayside ground, they have been trodden down 
into hardness. Many people treat their lives 
as if they were meant to be open commons 
instead of beautiful gardens. They do not 
fence them in to protect them, and so beasts 
pasture on them, tramping over them, chil- 
dren play upon them, and men drive their 
light carriages and their heavy wagons across 
them, making roadways hard as rock. We 
readily understand this in agriculture, and it 
is little more difficult to understand it in life 
culture. A good woman said that God 
wanted her heart to be a garden filled with 
sweet flowers. A garden needs constant care. 
Our lives should be watched continually, that 
the soil shall always be tender, so that all 
manner of lovely things may grow in them. 
But there are many lives that are not thus 
cared for and cultivated. They are un- 
fenced, and all kinds of feet go treading over 
them. No care is given to the companions 

[18] 



€i^t mot^ of ti^e pio'vD 

who are allowed admittance into the field; 
soon the gentle things are destroyed and the 
tender, mellow soil has become hard. Those 
who are intrusted with the care of children 
should never fail to think of their responsi- 
bility for the influences which are allowed to 
touch them. On a tablet placed in the high- 
school building at Sag Harbor, Long Islanti, 
are inscribed these words by Mrs. Russell 
Sage : " I would like to have the people im- 
pressed with their obligations as guardians of 
children, to see to it that their training and 
education be such that in the future of this 
little hamlet, as in the past, its good women 
and noble men may enrich the world." 

For the lack of such care many men and 
women become hardened, without capacity to 
receive tender impressions. They have large 
capacities for rich, beautiful life and for 
splendid service, but they are permitted to 
read all manner of books and to have all kinds 
of amusements and to see all kinds of evil life, 
and they grow up without beauty, really use- 
less and without loveliness. They need to be 

[19] 



Ci^e laeautt of ^elf^Control 

plowed and plowed deep that they may be 
made fertile. 

God himself does a great deal of plowing. 
His word is a plow. It cuts its way into 
men's lives, crushing the heart, revealing sin- 
fulness, producing penitence. It finds men 
impenitent and leaves them broken and con- 
trite, confessing sin and asking for mercy. 
David tells us, in one of his penitential 
Psalms, how he tried for a long time to hide 
his sins, but how his pain became unbearable, 
until he confessed. God's plow went deep 
into his heart. Then when at length he 
confessed his sin, forgiveness came and 
peace and joy. David became a new man 
after that. God's Spirit had plowed up his 
heart. 

A Bible found its way into a home where a 
Bible had never been before. The man of the 
house began to read it aloud to his wife in 
the evenings, and the words entered their 
hearts. One night, after reading aloud por- 
tions of the book, the man said, " Wife, if 
this book is true, we are wrong." The book 

[20] 



Ci^e motfi of ti^e pioia> 

condemned them. They became troubled. 
The word was plowing its way in their hearts. 
Next evening, as they read again, the sense 
of sin in them became still deeper, and the 
man said, " Wife, if this book is true, we are 
lost." They became very greatly distressed. 
The words they had read had shown them 
that they were sinners, guilty, lost. Next 
night they read again, and found something 
of hope — they had read of divine love 
and mercy, and the man said, " Wife, if 
this book is true, we can be saved." The 
word of God does mighty plow-work in 
men's hearts before they can be made 
fruitful. 

Sorrow ofttimes is God's plow. We dread 
pain and shrink from it. It seems destruc- 
tive and ruinous. The plow tears its way, 
with its keen, sharp blade, through our hearts 
and we say we are being destroyed. When 
the process is completed and we look upon the 
garden with its sweet flowers growing, we see 
that only blessing, enrichment, and beauty 
are the result. We complain of our suffer- 

[21] 



Ci^e idtantv of telecontrol 

ing, but we cannot afford to have suffering 
taken away. One writes, 

*The cry of man's anguish went up unto God: 

* Lord, take away pain — 

The shadow that darkens the world thou hast made. 

The close-coiling chain 
That strangles the heart, the burden that weighs 

On the winds that would soar; 
Lord, take away pain from the world thou hast made. 

That it love thee the more!' 

"Then answered the Lord to the cry of his world: 

* Shall I take away pain 

And with it the power of the soul to endure. 

Made strong by the strain? 
Shall I take away pity that knits heart to heart. 

And sacrifice high? 
Will ye lose all your heroes that lift from the fire 

White brows to the sky? 
Shall I take away love that redeems with a price. 

And smiles at its loss? 
Can ye spare from your lives that would climb unto mine 

The Christ on his cross?'" 

We cannot afford to lose pain out of the 
world or out of our life. It means too much 
to us. We owe too much, get too many joys 
and treasures from it, to have it taken out of 
our lives. We owe to suffering many of the 
treasures of experience. Without pain we 
never could know Christ deeply, intimately, 

[22] 



%^t mott of ti^e ^lotD 

experimentally. Two friends may love each 
other very sincerely, without suffering to- 
gether, but it is a new friendship into which 
they enter when they stand side by side in 
a great sorrow. Grief reveals Christ and 
draws him closer to us, and we love him better 
afterwards. To take pain from the world 
would be to rob life of its divinest joy, its 
richest blessings. If the share never cut 
through the soil there would be no furrows 
and no golden harvests. 

" Put pain from out the world, what room were left 
For thanks to God, for love to man? " 

This plow-work is for every one of us. 
God is making us, and that is the way he 
has to do it. A little child had a garden, 
which her father had given her. But noth- 
ing would grow in it. The flowers and plants 
would begin to come up, but in a short time 
they would wither and die. She had little 
pleasure from her garden. One day her 
father brought some workmen with heavy iron 
tools, and they began to tear up her garden. 

[23] 



Ci^e QBeautt of telecontrol 

They removed the soil. They destroyed 
everything beautiful in it. The child begged 
that the men would go away. She said they 
were ruining her garden. But they heeded 
not her implorings and tears. They broke 
up the ground and found a great rock just 
below the surface. This they took away, 
then smoothed down the soil, and made it 
beautiful again. After that the flowers and 
plants grew into beauty. Then the child 
understood the value of the plow-work, which 
at first seemed so destructive, but in the end 
left her garden a plac^ of rare beauty. 

Christ has in his love for us a wonderful 
vision of what he wants us to become. He 
would have us share his own glory. " Let 
the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us " 
is a prayer God loves to answer. He wants 
us to become radiant in loveliness. He wants 
love to blossom in our lives into all gentleness, 
sweetness, purity, and patience, into ideal 
manliness, heroic nobleness, splendid sacri- 
ficial life. But we never can attain this vision 
in ways of ease. To spare us from pain, 

[24] 



Ci^e mov^ of ti^e l^loto 

struggle and suffering is not the way of 
truest kindness for us. It needs the plow 
and sharp plow-work to bring us to our 
best beauty. 

Plowing is hard work. It is hard for him 
who follows the plow through the long fur- 
rows. There seems to be no reward for him. 
It is all painful work that he does — cutting 
and crushing the soil. He sees no growing 
seed, no golden harvest. It is all weariness, 
ache and toil for him, with nothing to cheer 
his heart, nothing to enrich him. The reaper 
rejoices as he thrusts in his sickle and then 
threshes out the yellow grain. But the work 
of the plowman seems destruction for the 
time. Yet in the end it proves to be glorious 
work. In a little poem quoted in The British 
Weekly^ the plow is represented as speaking 
thus of its work : 

" * I feed the peoples. 
Eagerly wait on me 

High-born and low-bom, pale children of want. 
Kingdoms may rise and wane. 
War claim her tithe of slain. 
Hands are outstretched to me. 
Master of men am I, seeming a slave. 
I feed the peoples, I, the plow. 
[25] 



C]^e OBeaut^ of telecontrol 

** ' I prove God's words true — 
Toiling that earth may give 
Fruit men shall gather with songs in the sun. 
Where sleeps the hidden grain 
Cornfields shall wave again; 
Showing that while men live 
Nor seed nor harvest-time ever will cease. 
I prove God's words true, I, the plow/ " 

It IS hard also for the soil, to have the 
plow of God driven through our hearts and 
over our lives, breaking them and crushing 
them. Oh, how heavy God's plow is, as it 
is dragged over us, its sharp share cutting 
into the very quick of our being. Rough is 
the plow-work. It has no comfort in it. No 
reward is apparent. The plow cuts remorse- 
lessly. But the plowman may have visions of 
a rich outcome from all his toil. There will 
be a harvest by and by, when, in the place 
where his share now cuts, golden grain will 
wave, and he will fill his bosom with sheaves. 
You cry out to-day because of the pain you 
suffer as God's plow cuts into your life 
and seems to be spoiling all its beauty. 
But look forward. First the plow, then 
the fields with their glorious grain. Now 

[26] 



you know nothing but pain; hereafter you 
will reap joy from the places now scarred 
and furrowed. 

There is a picture in Revelation which 
explains it all. There appeared a great com- 
pany, wearing white robes and carrying palm 
branches. "Who are these?" was asked. 
" These are they that come out of the great 
tribulation," was the answer. The way to 
heaven's highest glory lies through pain. 
To-day the plow is cutting through your life ; 
to-morrow a blessed harvest will wave. Dr. 
Babcock's little poem tells the story : 

"The dark brown mold's upturned 
By the sharp-edged plow. 
And I've a lesson learned: 

"My life is but a field 

Stretched out beneath God's sky. 
Some harvest rich to yield. 

"Where grows the golden grain — 
Where faith? where sympathy? 
In a furrow cut by pain." 



[27] 



ifindtng out JDutiejJ 



** Lord, keep me one — in deed, and word, and thought; 
With such distractions all the world is rife 
And different aspects cleave as with a knife 

In fragments small the good that must he sought. 

Give the controlling motive, for untaught 
By Thy divinity I am at strife. 
And shreds and patches make my troubled life; 

From out my chaos order must he brought. 

Oh, unify, direct, suhdue, control 

These warring elements, diverse desires. 
These conflicts of the timid flesh with soul; 

Hush Thou the voice that breathes the worldly word. 
Attune these ears to hear Thee speak, Lord — 
Quench zoith Thy Spirit all the earthly fires!'* 

Caroline Hazard, in " The Congregationalist." 



Ill 
fintiin^ out H^ntit^ 




OME people have trouble in 
discovering God's guidance 
in everyday life. Perhaps 
the trouble is that they look 
for the direction in some un- 
usual way, whereas, ordinarily, it is shown to 
them very simply. Lowell tells of one who 
journeyed to Horeb that he might see a reve- 
lation of God. After long search he found 
the revealing in some common little flowers. 
When he came home again he found these 
same flowers growing by his own doorstep. 
He need not have gone to Horeb to get what 
he sought. 

Duty never is a haphazard thing. There 
never are a half dozen things any one of 
which we may fitly do at any particular time ; 
there is some one definite thing in the divine 
thought for each moment. In writing music 
no composer strews the notes along the staff 

[31] 



^ Cl^e iBtantv of ^elf^Control 

just as they happen to fall on this line or 
that space ; he sets them in harmonious order 
and succession, so that they will make sweet 
music when played or sung. The builder 
does not fling the beams or stones into the 
edifice without plan ; every block of wood, or 
stone, or iron, and every brick has its place, 
and the building rises in graceful beauty. 

The days are like the lines and spaces in 
the musical staff, and duties are the notes ; 
each life is meant to make a harmony, and in 
order to this, each single duty must have its 
own proper place. One thing done out of its 
time and place makes discord in the music of 
life, just as one note misplaced on the staff 
makes discord. Each life is a building, and 
the little acts are the materials used; the 
whole is congruous and beautiful only when 
every act is in its own true place. 

"Far better in its place the lowliest bird 

Should sing aright to Him the lowliest song 
Than that a seraph strayed should take the word 
And sing its glory wrong." 

The art of true living therefore consists 

[32] 



fi'nnfng out ^ntit^ 



largely in doing always the thing that be- 
longs to the moment. But to know what is 
the duty of each moment is the question which 
to many persons is full of perplexity. Yet 
it would be easy if our obedience were but 
more simple. We have only to take the duty 
which comes next to our hand — " ye nexte 
thynge," as the quaint old Saxon legend puts 
it. Our duty never is some far-away thing. 
We do not have to search for it — it is always 
close at hand and easily found. The trouble 
is that we complicate the question of duty for 
ourselves by our way of looking at life, and 
then get our feet entangled in the meshes 
which our own hands have woven. 

Much of this confusion arises from taking 
too long views. We try to settle our duty in 
long sections. We think of years rather 
than of moments, of a whole life work rather 
than of individual acts. It is hard to plan 
a year's duty; it is easy to plan just for 
one short day. No shoulder can bear up the 
burden of a year's cares all gathered back 
into one load, but the weakest shoulder can 

[S3] 



C]^e OBeautr of ^elf-Control 

carry without weariness what really belongs 
to one little day. In trying to grasp the 
whole year's work, we are apt to overlook 
and to miss that of the present hour, just as 
one, in gazing at a far-off mountain top is 
likely not to see the little flower blooming 
at his feet, and even tread it down as he 
stumbles along. 

There is another way in which people 
complicate the question of duty. They try 
to reach decisions to-day on matters which 
really are not before them to-day, and which 
will not be before them for months, — pos- 
sibly for years. For example, a young man 
came to his pastor in very sore perplexity 
over a question of duty. He said he could 
not decide whether he ought to go as a foreign 
missionary or devote his life to work in some 
home field. Yet the young man had only 
closed his freshman year at college. It would 
require him three years more to complete his 
college course, and then he would have to 
spend three years in a theological seminary. 
Six years hence he would be ready for his 

[34] 



if (nntng our ^utit^ 



work as a minister, and it was concerning his 
choice of field then that the young man was 
now in such perplexity. He said that often 
he passed hours on his knees at prayer, seek- 
ing for light, but that no light had come. He 
had even tried fasting, but without avail. 
The matter had so taken possession of his 
mind that he had scarcely been able to study 
during the last term, and he had fallen be- 
hind in his class. His health, too, he felt, 
was being endangered, as he often lay awake 
much of the night, thinking about the mo- 
mentous question of his duty, as between 
home and foreign work. 

It is very easy to see what was this young 
man's mistake — he was trying to settle now a 
question with which he had nothing whatever 
to do at the present time. If he is spared to 
complete his course of training, the question 
will emerge as a really practical one five or 
six years hence. It is folly now to compel 
a decision which he cannot make intelligently 
and without perplexity. It is very evident 
therefore that this decision is no part of his 

[35] 



Ci^e iBeautt of telecontrol 

present duty. He wonders that he can get 
no light on the matter — that even in answer 
to agonizing prayer the perplexity does not 
grow less. But is there any ground to ex- 
pect God to throw light on a man's path so 
far in advance? Is there any promise that 
prayer for guidance at a point so remote 
should be answered to-day? Why should it 
be? Will it not be time enough for the 
answer to come when the decision must really 
be made? 

It is right, no doubt, for the young man 
to pray about the matter, but his present 
request should be that God would direct his 
preparation, so that he may be fitted for the 
work, whatever it may be, that in the divine 
purpose is waiting for him, and that, at the 
proper time, God would lead him to his al- 
lotted field. " Lord, prepare me for what 
thou art preparing for me," was the daily 
prayer of one young life. This would have 
been a fitting prayer for this young student ; 
but to pray that he may know now where the 
Lord will send him to labor when he is ready, 

[36] 



$lf(nDtn(j our J^utiejj 



SIX years hence, is certainly an unwarranted 
asking which is Httle short of presumption 
and of impertinent human intermeddling with 
divine things. 

Another obvious element of mistake in this 
man's case is that he is neglecting his present 
duty, or failing to do it well, while he is per- 
plexing himself with what his duty will be 
years hence. Thus he is hindering the divine 
purpose in the work his Master has planned 
for him. Life is not an hour too long. It 
requires every moment of our time to work 
out the divine plan for our lives. The pre- 
paratory years are enough, if they are faith- 
fully used, in which to prepare for the years 
of life work which come after. But every 
hour we waste leaves its own flaw in the 
preparation. Many people go halting and 
stumbling all through their later years, miss- 
ing opportunities, and continually failing 
where they ought to have succeeded, because 
they neglected their duty in the preparatory 
years. There are more persons who, like this 
student, worry about matters that belong 

[37] 



Cl^e OBeautt of telecontrol 

altogether to the future, than there are those 
who are anxious to do well the duty for the 
present moment. If we would simply do al- 
ways the next thing, we would be relieved of 
all perplexity. 

The law of divine guidance is, step by step. 
One who carries a lantern on a country road 
at night sees only one step before him. If 
he takes that step, however, he carries his 
lantern forward and this makes another step 
plain. At length he reaches his destination 
without once stepping into the darkness. 
The whole way has been made light for him, 
though only a step at a time. This is the 
usual method of God's guidance. The Bible 
is represented as a lamp unto the feet. It is 
a lamp, or lantern, — not a blazing sun, nor 
even a lighthouse, but a plain, common lan- 
tern, which one can carry about in his hand. 
It IS a lamp unto the feet, not throwing its 
beams afar, not illumining a whole hemi- 
sphere, but shining only on the bit of road 
on which the pilgrim's feet are walking. 

If this is the way God guides us, it ought 
[38] 



ifintiing out J^utiejS 



never to be hard for us to find our duty. It 
never lies far away, inaccessible to us, it is 
always " ye nexte thynge." It never lies out 
of sight, in the darkness, for God never puts 
our duty where we cannot see it. The thing 
we think may be our duty, but which is still 
lying in obscurity, is not yet our duty, what- 
ever it may be a little farther on. The duty 
for the moment is always perfectly clear, and 
that is as far as we need concern ourselves. 
When we do the little that is plain to us, we 
will carry the light on, and it will shine on 
the next moment's step. 

If not even one little step of duty is plain 
to us, " ye nexte thynge " is to wait a little. 
Sometimes that is God's will for us for the 
moment. At least, it never is his will that 
we should take a step into the darkness. He 
never hurries us. We would better always 
wait than to rush on as if we were not quite 
sure of the way. Often, in our impatience, 
we do hasten things, which we find after a little 
were not God's next things for us at all. 
That was Peter's mistake when he cut off 

[39] 



Ci^e I3eautr of telecontrol 

a man's ear in the Garden, and it led to sore 
trouble and humiliation a little later. There 
are many quick, impulsive people, who are 
continually doing wrong next things, and 
who then find their next thing trying to 
undo the last. We should always wait for 
God, and should never take a step which 
he has not made light for us. 

"To wait is naught 
When waiting means to serve." 

Yet we must not be too slow. This is as 
great a danger as being too quick. The 
people of Israel were never to march until 
the pillar moved — they were neither to run 
ahead nor to lag behind God. Indolence is as 
bad as rashness. Being too late is as bad as 
being too soon. There are some people who 
are never on time. They never do things 
just when they ought to be done. They are 
continually in perplexity which of several 
things they ought to do first. The trouble 
is, they are forever putting off or neglecting 
or forgetting things, and consequently each 

[40] 



ftnDing out '^utit^ 



morning finds them not only facing that day's 
duties, but the omitted duties of past days as 
well. There never really are two duties for 
the same moment, and if everything is done 
in its own time, there never will be any per- 
plexity about what special right thing to do 
next. 

It is an immeasurable comfort that our du- 
ties are not the accidents of any undirected 
flow of circumstances. We are clearly as- 
sured that if we acknowledge the Lord in all 
our ways, he will direct our paths. That is, 
if we keep eye and heart ever turned toward 
God, we never shall be left to grope after the 
path, for it will be made plain to us. We are 
authorized to pray that God would order 
our steps. What direction in duty could be 
more minute than this ? " He that f oUoweth 
me shall not walk in the darkness," said the 
Master. " He that foUoweth me." We must 
not run on ahead of him, neither must we 
lag behind; in either case we shall find 
darkness, just as deep darkness in advance 
of our Guide, if we will not wait for him, 

[41] 



Ci^e laeautt of ^elf^conttol 

as it is behind him, if we will not keep 
close up to him. 

Prompt, unquestioning, undoubting follow- 
ing of Christ, takes all perplexity out of 
Christian life, and gives unbroken peace. 
There is something for every moment, and 
duty is always " ye nexte thynge." It may 
sometimes be an interruption, setting aside 
a cherished plan of our own, breaking into 
a pleasant rest we had arranged, or taking 
us away from some favorite occupation. It 
may be to meet a disappointment, to take up 
a cross, to endure a sorrow or to pass through 
a trial. It may be to go upstairs into our 
room and be sick for a time, letting go our 
hold upon all active life. Or it may be just 
the plainest, commonest bit of routine work 
in the home, in the office, on the farm, at 
school. Most of us find the greater number 
of our " nexte thynges " in the tasks that are 
the same day after day, yet even in the in- 
terstices, amid these set tasks, there come a 
thousand little things of kindness, patience, 
gentleness, thoughtfulness, obligingness, like 

[42] 



f inlitng our J^utit^ 



the sweet flowers that grow in the crevices 
upon the cold, hard rocks, and we should be 
ready always for these as we hurry along, as 
well as for the sterner duties that our com- 
mon calling brings to us. 

There never is a moment without its duty, 
and if we are living near to Christ and follow- 
ing him closely, we never shall be left in ig- 
norance of what he wants us to do. If there 
is nothing, absolutely nothing, we can do, at 
any particular time, then we may be sure that 
the Master wants us to rest. For he is not 
a hard Master, and besides, rest is as need- 
ful in its time as work. We need to rest in 
order that we may work. So we must not 
worry when there come moments which seem 
to have no task for our hands. " Ye nexte 
thynge " then is to sit down and wait. 



[43] 



into ti^e mqfyt l^anDjS 



**Love, we are in God^s hand. 
How strange, now, looks the life He makes us lead; 
So free we seem, so fettered fast we are I 
I feel he laid the fetter: let it lie I " 

Browning. 

'^ But deep ivithin my heart of hearts there hid 
Ever the confidence, amends for all. 
That heaven repairs what wrong earth's journey did. 
When love from lifelong exile comes at call.'* 

Browning. 



IV 



3Into ti^e mm mnn^ 



ERTAIN ancient mariners 
were accustomed to say, as 
they put out to sea, " Keep 
me, O God, for my boat is so 
small and the ocean is so 
great and so stormy." There could not be a 
fitter prayer for a life — any life — as it sets 
out on its career. The world is vast and full 




of perils, and a life, even the greatest, is very 
small and frail. It has no ability to face 
the difficulties, the obstacles, the hardships 
it must face, if it is to pass successfully 
through life. 

Probably one-half the children born in this 
world die as infants. Then of those who get 
through infancy, how many drop during the 
early decades that follow? How many of 
those who reach adult years live vigorous lives 
and accomplish things worth while, attain suc- 
cess in business, in the professions, in life's 

[47] 



Ci^e OBeaut^ of ^elf* Control 

callings? It has been stated, perhaps cor- 
rectly, that only four or five per cent of those 
who enter business pursuits succeed, while 
ninety-five or ninety-six per cent fail. The 
w^orld is large and full of storm and struggle, 
and only a few get through it safely. 

If there were no one greater and stronger 
than ourselves into whose keeping we may 
commit our lives, as we go out to meet the 
perils, what hope could we have of ever getting 
through safely? The Breton mariner be- 
lieved that there was a God who ruled in all 
the world, whose footsteps were on the sea, 
and as he went out on the wild waters he en- 
trusted his frail boat to the protection of 
that divine Keeper. Blessed is he who does 
the same with his life. He cannot guide him- 
self. He cannot master the storms. He can- 
not shelter himself. ^' Keep me, O my God,'' 
should be his prayer, not once only, when he 
launches his barque, but daily, hourly. 

But does God care for little individual 
lives? Does he care for the child that has 
lost the shelter of human love, and has no one 

[48] 



9Into ti^e mm ^auDis 

to think of it or provide for it? Does the 
great God give thought and care to one little 
child among the millions of the world? 
Some one asks and answers the question: 

*** Among so many, can he care? 
Can special love be everywhere? * 
I asked. My soul bethought of this, — 
* In just that very place of his 
Where he hath put and keepeth you 
God hath no other thing to do.' "j 

The very thing Jesus Christ wants to do 
for us is to be the keeper of our lives as 
they pass through the world with its storms 
and dangers. We do not know what we lose 
when we keep our lives out of the hands of 
Christ. No other can make of us what he 
could make. No other can bring out the 
powers and possibilities of our being as he 
can. Our lives are like instruments of music. 
They have marvelous capacities, but only 
one who has the skill can bring out the music. 
Only one who understands our lives, with all 
their strange powers, can call out their 
possibilities. There is a story of an organist 
in one of the cities of Germany, who one day 

[49] 



Ci^e QBeautt of telecontrol 

refused to permit a visitor to play upon his 
organ. The visitor begged to be allowed at 
least to put his hands upon the keys and play 
a few notes, and the old man reluctantly con- 
sented. The moment the stranger began to 
play, the organ gave forth such music as it 
never had given forth before. The custo- 
dian was amazed, recognizing the fact that 
a master was at his keys. When he asked 
who it was, the player answered, " I am 
Mendelssohn." " And I refused you permis- 
sion to play upon my organ ! " the old man 
said, in grief and self-reproach. 

It is said that one day, many years ago, 
there was an auction in London which was 
attended by distinguished people. Among 
other things offered for sale was a Cremona 
violin, more than a hundred years old. It 
was reputed to be a Stradivarius. The auc- 
tioneer raised the violin and held it gently, 
almost reverently, as he told its story and 
spoke of its wonderful qualities. Then he 
gave it to a musician who was present, asking 
him to play upon it. The man played as well 

[50] 



9Into t})t Eigi^t i^anDisi 

as he could, but the violin in his hands failed 
to win enthusiasm from the audience. 

The auctioneer began to call for bids. But 
the responses came slowly. Then there came 
into the room a stranger, an Italian. He 
pressed his way to the side of the auctioneer 
to see the violin. He took it into his own 
hands, examined it carefully, held it to his 
ear as if it had some secret to whisper to 
him, and then laid it gently on his breast 
and began to play upon it, and marvelous 
music at once filled the room. The people 
were strangely affected. Some smiled, some 
wept ; every heart was stirred. It was Paga- 
nini, the great master, whose fingers were 
on the strings. When he laid the instru- 
ment down, the bidding began again, and 
there was no trouble now in selling it. 
In the hands of the first player, the quali- 
ties of the violin were not brought out, and 
men did not know what a treasure was be- 
ing offered to them. But in the hands of the 
great master its marvelous powers were dis- 
covered and brought out. 

[51] 



C]^e OBeautt of ^elf^Conttol 

Our lives are like violins. In the right 
hands they will give forth wonderful music. 
But in unskillful hands their powers are not 
discovered. It is strange with what want of 
thought and care many people entrust their 
lives into the hands of those who cannot 
bring out the best that is in them, ofttimes 
of those who only do them harm. This is 
seen in the recklessness which many young 
people show in choosing their friends. In- 
deed, they do not choose their friends at 
all, but let themselves drift into association 
and intimacy with any who come their way. 
The influence of friendship is almost irresist- 
ible. The admission of a new companion 
into our life is the beginning of a new epoch 
in our course. If the friendship is pure, 
inspiring, and elevating, if the friend is one 
who in his own character will set before us 
new visions of beautiful life, and in all his 
influence over us will prove inspiring, the day 
of his coming to us will ever be a day to 
be remembered. But if the new friend is 
unworthy, or if his hands are unskillful, 

[52] 



nothing good can come from his friendship. 
His coming into our life is a tragedy. 

Young people should seek association with 
those who are wiser and more experienced 
than themselves, those who can teach them 
lessons they have not yet learned, lead them 
in paths they have not yet walked in, and 
help them to find their own powers and pos- 
sibilities. It is a great mistake merely to 
choose a friend with whom to have a good 
time, one who will flatter us and make us 
feel satisfied with ourselves, one with whom 
we may get on pleasantly. We should have 
friends who, like Paganini with the Cremona, 
can discover and call out the best that is 
in us. " Our best friend is he who makes us 
do what we can." 

It is the same with the teachers to whom 
we may go. There are those who have wis- 
dom enough to teach, and who honestly do 
the best they can with those who come to 
them, but who lack the mental vision to dis- 
cover the faculties that are in their pupils, 
or who lack the ability and skill to bring out 

[53] 



m^t Tdtaut^ of ^elf'Conttol 

their possibilities. There are other teachers 
who may know less themselves, but they have 
the power to find the talents that are in their 
pupils, and then to call them out. The same 
is true of the value and influence of books. 
There are books which we may enjoy read- 
ing, and which may give us entertainment 
and pleasure, but which leave in our minds 
no new knowledge, no stimulating of thought, 
no new visions of beauty, no wonder to impel 
us to research, and no strengthening of char- 
acter. On the other hand, there are books 
which stir our hearts, which wake us up, which 
kindle in us upward inspirations, and which 
incite us to the attaining of better things. 
These are the books we should read, for they 
will give us the help we most need if we are 
to grow into fullness of life and power. 

But whomsoever or whatsoever we may take 
into our life, Christ should always have the 
first place as Master, Guide, and Friend. No 
other one knows the capacities that are in us, 
and no other can find and bring out these 
capacities and train them for the highest ser- 

[54] 



into ti^e mtgi^t f anD0 

vice. Into Christ's hands, therefore, we 
should commit our lives for teaching, for 
discipline, for the developing of their powers. 
Then we shall reach our best, and realize the 
divine thought for us. 

Christ is able also to keep our lives. He 
became Master of all the world. He met 
every power and conquered it. He faced all 
evil and overcame it. We never can find our- 
selves in the hands of any enemy who is too 
strong for him. One of the most beautiful 
ascriptions in the Bible is that which says: 
" Now unto him that is able to guard you 
from stumbling, and to set you before the 
presence of his glory without blemish in ex- 
ceeding joy ... be glory." In all this 
world's dangers, he can guard our lives from 
harm, and he can present us at last without 
blemish. 

Then Christ is able to guide us. The 
world is a great mass of tangled paths. They 
run everywhere, crossing each other in all di- 
rections. Hands are forever beckoning us 
here and there, and we know not which beck- 

[55] 



Ci^e idtautv of telecontrol 

oning to follow. Even friendship, loyal as 
it may be, sincere and sympathetic as it is, 
lacks wisdom and may guide us mistakenly. 
There is One only whose wisdom is infallible, 
whose advice never errs, and he would be 
our Guide. There is a little prayer in one 
of the Psalms which pleads : " Cause me to 
know the way wherein I should walk." This 
prayer, if sincere, will always be answered. 
We may see no hand leading us. We may 
hear no voice saying, as we walk in the dark- 
ness, " This is the way, walk ye in it." Yet 
if we seek divine guidance and accept it im- 
plicitly, we shall always have it. We have it 
in Browning: 

"I go to prove my soul! 
I see my way as birds their trackless way. 
I shall arrive! what time, what circuit first, 
I ask not: but unless God send his hail 
Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow. 
In some time, his good time, I shall arrive: 
He guides me and the bird. In his good time!" 

Not only do we have keeping and guidance 
in Christ, but everything we need on the way, 
and then eternal blessedness. We may com- 

[56] 



hiit our lives into his hands with absolute 
confidence. He will take us with all our faults 
and our sins and restore us. He will bring 
out all the possibilities of our lives. He will 
keep us from hurt in all the perils of the 
way. He will lead us in the right path amid 
all the confusion and tangle. He will bring 
us to glory. 



[57] 



It'tJing unto (IB>oD 



** Settle it in your heart that it is the sum of all business 
and blessedness to live to God.'' 

John Wesley. 

** The glory is not in the task, but in doing it for Him.'' 

Jean Ingelow. 



litt'ng unto (0oli 




HE object of our life de- 
termines its character. 
WJiat we live for tells what 
we are. If a man's aim is 
to get rich, if that is the 
ruling motive of his Hfe, greed for gold is 
his absorbing passion. If a man lives to 
do good to his fellowmen, if this is his single 
purpose, the desire will inspire all his 
thoughts and actions. 

It is interesting to put ourselves to the 
test to discover just what is the real pur- 
pose of our living. When we know this we 
can tell whither our life is tending, what it 
will be when it is finished, what impression 
we are making on the world, what our living 
means to God. 

That which distinguishes a Christian life 
from others is that it is God's. We belong 
to God. To live to any other, therefore, is 

[61] 



% 



C]^e "Beauty of ^ elf* Control 

disloyalty and idolatry. St. Paul in one of 
his epistles asserts this truth very strongly. 
He says : " None of us liveth to himself, 
and none dieth to himself. For whether 
we live, we live unto the Lord; or whether 
we die, we die unto the Lord; whether we 
live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's." 
All our relations are with the Lord. To him 
we owe our full obedience — we have no other 
master. It is his work we are doing, whether 
it be what we call secular work, or whether 
it be what we consider religious work. In all 
our acts, words, thoughts, feelings, we are 
living to the Lord, if we are living worthily. 
We may not be conscious of this relation, but 
whether we are or not, it is to the Lord that 
we are living. We may not think definitely 
of God every time we speak, every time we 
do anything, but if we are sincere our desire 
always is to please God, to honor him, to have 
his approval. It is to the Lord that we must 
answer in judgment. "We shall all stand be- 
fore the judgment-seat of God . . . each one 
of us shall give account of himself to God." 

[62] 



Iftjing unto (Boh 



The truest life is that which is lived most 
fully and unbrokenly unto God. In one of 
his books Dr. W. L. Watkinson relates that 
Jenny Lind said to John Addington Sy- 
monds, in accounting for the motive and 
spirit of her wonderful singing, " I sing to 
God." She meant that she looked into God's 
face, as it were, and consciously sang to him. 
She did not sing to the vast audience that 
hung on her words and was held spellbound 
by them. She was scarcely conscious of any 
face before her but God's. She thought of 
no listening ear but God's. We may not 
all be able to enter into such perfect rela- 
tion with God as did this marvelous singer, 
but this is the only true ideal of all Christian 
life. We should do each piece of work for 
God. The business man should do all his 
business for God. The artist should paint 
his picture for God. The writer should 
write his book for God. The farmer should 
till his ground for God. This means that 
we are always engaged in the Father's busi- 
ness and must do it all in a way that he 

[63] 



Ci^e OBeautt of ^elf-Control 

will approve. Jesus was a carpenter, for 
many years working at the carpenter's bench. 
We are sure that he did each piece of work 
for his Father's eye. He did it skillfully, 
conscientiously, beautifully. He did not 
skimp it nor hurry through it so as to get 
away from the shop earlier. 

What a transformation it would make in 
all our work if we could say in truth, " I do 
it for God." Now this is not an impossible 
ideal for Christian life. It was this that St. 
Paul meant, in part, at least, when he said, 
" To me to live is Christ." He was living 
in Christ. He was living for Christ. His 
life was all Christ — Christ living in him. 
He had the same conception of Christian life 
when he wrote : " Whether therefore ye eat, 
or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the 
glory of God." Even our eating and drink- 
ing are included in this high ideal. The sins 
of gluttony and intemperance in drinking 
are condemned. We must also eat hygien- 
ically — eat to live and not live to eat. To 
do anything to the glory of God is to do 

[64] 



ILtting unto dBioD 



it so that it will reflect the divine glory and 
be for the divine honor. This is part of 
what St. Paul meant when he said, " We live 
unto the Lord.'' 

It is possible to follow the guidance of 
conscience in all things, doing always what 
is right, and yet not live unto the Lord, not 
to have any consciousness of God, any sense 
of a personal God, any thought of God at 
all, in what we say or do. It is possible to 
accept the Christian moralities as our rule 
of life, following them even in the smallest 
things, yet not be living unto God, not even 
believing in God nor having any love for him. 
When the singer said, " I sing to God," 
she meant that she thought of God as she 
sang, and poured forth her song directly in 
praise and love to him. So we should seek 
to do all our work for God. 

There cannot but be a wonderful inspira- 
tion in living in this way unto God, if we make 
it real. It is not always easy to work under 
those who are over us. Sometimes they are 
unjust, unfair in their treatment of us, un- 

[65] 



Cl^e OBeauti? of ^elf^Conttol 

kind toward us, tyrannical in their exactions 
of service or in their manner of enforcing 
their commands. It is easy for us to fret 
and chafe when we have to endure severity 
or unkindness in the performance of our 
daily tasks. But it changes everything if 
we are conscious of another Master back 
of the human master, and remember that he 
is the one for whom we really are working. 
He is never unfair, or unjust, never severe or 
harsh. We can work joyfully with him and 
for him, unaffected by the hardness or the in- 
humanity of the human master who is imme- 
diately over us. We may bear the harshness, 
the injustice, the unkindness we have to en- 
dure, if it is our duty to stay in the place, 
seeing ever the eye of Christ, with its love and 
sympathy, looking upon us and enduring all 
the harshness for him. 

St. Paul exhorts servants to be obedient 
to them that are their masters, " as servants 
of Christ, doing the will of God from the 
heart.'' " Whatsoever ye do," he says, 
" work heartily, as unto the Lord, and not 

[66] 



litjing unto d^oD 



unto men; knowing that from the Lord ye 
shall receive the recompense of the inheri- 
tance: ye serve the Lord Christ." It makes 
the most trying service easy when it is done 
in this way — looking beyond the human 
master and seeing Christ as the real Master, 
for whom we are working. We are living 
unto him. We are serving him. From him 
we shall receive the reward for our faithful- 
ness. 

St. Paul speaks in this same connection of 
dying. It does not seem strange to hear 
him say, " Whether we live, we live unto the 
Lord." But when he goes on and says, 
" Whether we die, we die unto the Lord," the 
words strike us as unusual and startle us. 
Dying does not interrupt nor in any way 
interfere with our relations to Christ. It 
is just like any other passage in life. Dying 
is only a phase or experience of living. We 
are as really Christ's when we die and after 
we die as we are when we are living. The 
words are wonderfully illuminating; they 
throw a bright light on the mystery of dying. 

[67] 



Ci^e OBeautt of ^elf*Control 

We are not separated from Christ in death; 
the bond between us and him is not broken. 
When we die we do not pass out of Christ's 
service; we only pass to another form of 
service. We have the impression that death 
cuts our life off, interrrupts it, makes an 
entire change in everything that concerns 
us. But the truth is, life goes on through 
death and after death very much the same as 
it did before. There will be nothing greatly 
new in our experience, nothing strange or 
unusual, when we are dead. Life and death 
are all one, — parts of the same continued 
existence. " Whether we live, we live unto 
the Lord; or whether we die, we die unto 
the Lord; whether we live therefore, or die, 
we are the Lord's." 

There really is nothing to dread, there- 
fore, In dying. The Old Testament Scrip- 
tures represent it as a walk through the 
valley, the valley of the shadow of death, 
accompanied by the Shepherd, whose pres- 
ence allays all fear and gives peace. In 
the New Testament what we call dying Is 

[68] 



tMn^ unto d^oD 



a departure from earth, in the companion- 
ship of Christ. There is a mystery in it 
because it is away from all that we know or 
understand and all that we can see, but there 
is nothing in it to be dreaded, for it does not 
separate from Christ for an instant, and it 
takes the person to Christ to be with him for- 
ever. We are to die unto the Lord, with 
no interruption to our attachment to him, 
and then continue, in the heavenly life, living 
unto the Lord. For life will go on with its 
blessed activities in heaven. Our work may 
differ in its character, but we shall ever be 
loving and serving Christ. 

Thus our relation with Christ is for all 
time, through death, and through eternity. 
He does not become our Saviour merely to 
deliver us in some emergency. Ofttimes this 
is all that we can do for a man who is in 
distress or need. We can relieve him for the 
time, but when the occasion is past he drops 
away from us, perhaps back into his old 
trouble, and our relation to him ceases. But 
when we accept Christ as our Saviour it is for- 

[69] 



Cl^e I3eautt of ^elf*Conttol 

ever. He takes us into his love and into 
his life. He establishes a relation with us 
that never shall be broken. He will never 
weary of us. We may sin against him, but 
he will not cast us off. We may be un- 
faithful to him and may wander far away, 
but when we repent and creep back to him, 
he will forgive us and receive us again to 
the place of love. The marriage covenant 
has a limitation, for it is " till death do us 
part." But there is no such limitation in 
the covenant made between Christ and us. 
Death will not part us from him. We be- 
long to him in the heavenly life. We are 
to follow him in this world to the very last, 
and then forever in the world to come. We 
are to do the will of God on earth as it is 
done in heaven, and then continue to do his 
will when we reach heaven. 



[70] 



Cl^e 91ttt)fjspeni2ial)le Ci^rfjsit 



' / could not do without Thee; 

No other friend can read 
The spirit's strange deep longings. 

Interpreting its need; 
No human heart could enter 

Each dim recess of mine. 
And soothe, and hush, and calm it, 

blessed Lord, but Thine,'* 



VI 



Ci^e 31nt)ijspen0al3le €^xi^t 




NE of Christ's words to his 
disciples was, " Without me 
ye can do nothing." If 
anyone is thinking of giv- 
ing up Christ, let him wait 
a moment and ponder the question, whether 
he can afford to do it or not. What will it 
mean to him to give up Christ? There are 
some losses which do not take much from 
us; there are some friends whom we might 
lose and be little the poorer. But what would 
it take out of our life to give up Christ? 
" Without me," he says, " ye can do nothing." 
An old writer tells of dreaming that a 
strange thing happened to his Bible. Every 
word in it that referred to Christ had faded 
from the pages. He turned to the New Tes- 
tament to find the Gospels, and found only 
blank paper. He looked for the prophecies 
about the Messiah, which he used to read, and 

[73] 



€^t ^Beautt of telecontrol 

they all had been blotted out. He recalled 
sweet promises which he used to lean on with 
delight, but not one of them could be found. 
The name of Christ had faded from every 
place where once it had been. What would 
it mean to us to find ourselves some day 
without Christ, to find that we had lost him, 
to look for him in some great need and find 
that we do not have him any more.? 

There is a striking little story by Henry 
van Dyke, called " The Lost Word." ^ It is 
a story of one of the early centuries. Her- 
mas had become a Christian. He belonged 
to a wealthy and distinguished pagan family. 
His father disinherited him and drove him 
from his home when he accepted the new faith. 
From being one of the richest young men in 
Antioch he was now one of the poorest. In 
the Grove of Daphne one day he was sitting 
in sadness by a gushing spring, when there 
came to him a priest of Apollo, a pagan 
philosopher, who, seeing his unhappy mood, 
began to talk with him. In the end the old 

^ Published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. 

[74] 



man had made this compact with Hermas. 
He assured him of wealth, of favor, of suc- 
cess, and Hermas was to give him only a 
word — he was to part forever with the name 
of Him he had learned to worship. " Let 
me take that word and all that belongs to 
it entirely out of your life, so that you shall 
never need to hear it or speak it again. I 
promise you everything," said the old man, 
** and this is all I ask in return. Do you 
consent?" "Yes, I consent," said Hermas. 
So he lost the word, the Blessed Name. 

He had sold it. It was not his any more. 
He went back to Antioch, to his old home. 
There he found his father dying. For hours 
he had been calling for his son. The old 
man received him eagerly, said he had for- 
given him, and asked his son for his forgive- 
ness. He then asked Hermas to tell him the 
secret of the Christian faith which he had 
chosen. " You found something that made 
you willing to give up life for it. What 
was it you found? " The father was dying 
and his pagan belief gave him no comfort. 

[75] 



Ci^e I3eautt of ^elf^Conttol 

He wanted now to know the Christian's se- 
cret. Hermas began to tell his father the 
secret of his faith. " Father," he said, " you 
must believe with all your heart and soul 
and strength in" — Where was the word? 
What was the name.^^ What had become of 
it.'^ He groped in darkness, but could not 
find it. There was a lonely soul, crying out 
for the Name, but Hermas could not tell even 
his own dying father what it was. The word 
was lost. 

Love came into his life and happiness was 
heaped on happiness. A child was born to 
him. But in all the wondrous joy some- 
thing was wanting. Both he and his wife 
confessed it. They sought a dismantled 
shrine in the garden and Hermas sought to 
pour out his heart. " For all good gifts," 
he said, " for love, for life, we praise, we 
bless, we thank — " But he could not find 
the word. The Name was beyond his reach. 
There was no one to thank. He had lost 
God. 

The boy grew into wondrous beauty. 
[76] 



One day Hermas was victorious in the char- 
iot races. Then he took his boy in the 
chariot and again drove round the ring to 
show him to the people. The tumult fright- 
ened the horses and they ran away. The 
child was tossed off and when his father 
turned to look for him, he was lying hke a 
broken flower on the sand. His distress was 
great. Days passed. " Is there nothing 
that we can do?" said the mother. "Is 
there no one to pity us? Let us pray for 
his life." Hermas sank on his knees beside 
his wife. " Out of the depths," he began, — 
" Out of the depths, we call for pity. The 
light of our eyes is fading. Spare the 
child's life, thou merciful — " But there 
was only a deathly blank. He could not 
find the Name. The word he wanted was lost. 
This story has become true in actual life 
thousands of times. People have given up 
the name of Christ, sold it for money, or 
pleasure, or power, or sin. Then when times 
of need came, and they turned to find help, 
there was only blankness. In a home there 

[77] 



Ci^e I3eaut^ of ^elf^Control 

is some great distress. One is nigh unto 
death, and friends want to pray for him. 
But they cannot pray. In childhood they 
were taught the words, " Our Father," but 
long since they have lost the holy Name, and 
now, when they would give worlds to go to 
God they cannot find the way. 

In all the world there is no sadness so 
deep as the sadness of one who has lost Christ 
and then in some great need is trying to 
find him. There is no ear to hear. It is a 
fearful thing to give up Christ, to lose him. 
" Without me ye can do nothing.'' 

We must not press these words too far. 
Of course there are certain things men can 
do who are without Christ, who have no con- 
nection with him. There are people who 
are very useful, benefactors to others, who 
never pray, who do not love Christ. One 
may be an artist and paint lovely pictures, 
pictures which the world will admire, and yet 
may not believe in Christ, or even think of 
him. One may be a writer and prepare beau- 
tiful books which shall interest others and 

[78] 



enlighten, cheer, and inspire many lives to 
noble deeds, and yet really disregard Christ, 
be altogether without Christ. One may be a 
patriot soldier, fighting the battles of free- 
dom or country, or a statesman leading his 
land to honor, and yet not know Christ, nor 
be able to get to him. A man may be a 
good father, kind to his family, making his 
home beautiful with the loveliest adornments, 
and rich with refinement and gentleness, pro- 
viding for his children not only things their 
bodies need, but providing also for their men- 
tal needs and cravings, and know nothing of 
Christ. There are homes of luxury and re- 
finement, homes of culture, in which there is 
no prayer, where Christ is never welcomed 
as a Guest. There may be natural affec- 
tion, father-love, mother-love, love of hus- 
band and wife, love of friends, yet no love 
for Christ. When Jesus says, " Apart from 
me ye can do nothing," we must under- 
stand his meaning. He does not say we 
cannot live good lives, cannot be good mer- 
chants, good lawyers, good teachers, good 

[79] 



%^t TStautv of telecontrol 

fathers and mothers — what he means is that 
we cannot have the joy and blessing of 
spiritual life, cannot do the things of God. 

The relation between Christ and his 
friends is closer than any human relation. 
No one can say to any friend, " Without me 
you can do nothing." The mother can- 
not say it to her child. It is a sore loss 
when the mother of a baby is taken away — 
how sore a loss no words can explain. Even 
God cannot twice give a mother. No other 
one, however loving and tender in spirit, 
however gentle in care, however wise in guid- 
ing and helping the young life, can be to it 
all its own mother could have been. Yet 
even the best and holiest mother cannot say 
to her child, " Without me ye can do 
nothing." The child, though so bereft, lives 
and may live nobly without a mother. 

There are other earthly friendships that 
become so much to those to whom they are 
given that they seem to be indispensable. 
The trusting, clinging wife may say to her 
husband, who is being taken away from her: 

[80] 



m)t 9InDijspen?jable €^ti^t 

" I cannot live without you. If you leave me 
I will die. I cannot face the cold winds with- 
out your shelter. I cannot go on with the 
tasks, the cares, the struggles, the respon- 
sibihties, the sorrows of life without your 
comradeship, your love, your cheer, your 
strong support, your brave confidence and 
wise guidance." So it seems to her as she 
stands amid the wrecks of her hopes. But 
when he is gone, — the strong man on whom 
she has leaned so confidingly, she takes up 
the duties of hfe, its cares, its trying experi- 
ences, its tasks, its battles, and goes on for 
long years with splendid faithfulness and 
great bravery. " I never dreamed that I 
could possibly get along as I have," said a 
woman after a year of widowhood. Then 
she told of her utter faintness when she real- 
ized that she would no more have her hus- 
band's comradeship. She had never had a 
care or a responsibility unshared by him. 
As she turned away from his grave it seemed 
to her that now she was utterly alone. But 
Christ was with her. Peace came into her 

[ 81 ] 



Ci^e OBeaut^ of telecontrol 

heart, calmness came, then courage began 
to revive. She grew strong and self-rehant. 
She was a marvel to her friends as she took 
up her work. She showed resources which 
none ever dreamed she had. Her sorrow 
made her. She lived and lived grandly now 
without the one who had seemed essential to 
her very existence. 

So we learn that no human life however 
close it has been is ever actually indispen- 
sable to another life. To no one, no human 
friend, can we say, " I cannot live without 
you.'' The taking away of the human re- 
veals God. 

But note what Jesus says, " Apart from 
me ye can do nothing." As the vine is es- 
sential to the life of the branch, so is Christ 
essential to us. We cannot meet any of the 
serious experiences of life without Christ. 
A wonderful change came upon the disciples 
as they lived with Christ, heard his teach- 
ing, let his influence into their lives. They 
were transformed. They never could have 
done anything without Christ. 

[82] 



Do without Christ! You do not know 
what Christ has been to you, even when you 
were not aware that he was your Friend. 
You think he has not been doing anything 
for you, when, in fact, he has been crowning 
you with loving-kindness and tender mer- 
cies all your days. If we were to lose Christ 
to-day out of our life, as Hermas in the story 
lost him, if his name were utterly blotted out, 
his friendship and help taken utterly from 
our life, what a dark, sad world this would 
be for us ! Think of going out to-morrow 
to your duty, struggle, danger, responsi- 
bility, without Christ, unable to find him in 
your need. Think of not having Christ in 
your day of sorrow! Think of dying with- 
out Christ ! 

But we do not have to do without Christ. 
Only by our own rejection can we cut our- 
selves oif from him. 



[83] 



Ci^e £Dne mi^o ^tanDjs OB^ 



* Spirit of God, descend upon my heart; 

Wean it from earth; through all its pulses move ; 
Stoop to my weakness, mighty as Thou art. 

And make me love Thee as I ought to love. 

Teach me to love Thee as Thine angels love. 
One holy passion filling all my frame; 

The baptism of the heaven-descended Dove, 
My heart an altar, and Thy love the flame." 



VII 



Ci^e flDne mi^o ^tatiH I3t 





i 


1 





|ESUS spoke to his disciples 
of the Holy Spirit as the 
Paraclete. The word used 
in our translation is Com- 
forter. The name is very 
beautiful and suggestive. We think of a 
comforter as one who gives consolation in 
trouble. There is much sorrow in the world, 
and there is always need of those who under- 
stand the art of comforting. Not many do. 
Job spoke of his friends, who came to offer 
him consolation in his great trouble, as " mis- 
erable comforters.^' They certainly were. 
Their words as he heard them were like 
thorns. They only added to his suffering. 
There are those in every place who want to 
be comforters. When they see one in pain 
or in tears they think they must comfort 
him. So they begin to say things which they 
suppose they ought to say. They are sin- 

[87] 



C]^e TStant^ of ^elf^Control 

cere enough, but they do not know what they 
should say. Their words give no strength; 
they only make the grief seem deeper, sad- 
der, and more hopeless. They are mere 
empty platitudes ; or they misinterpret the 
sorrows of their friends. That was what 
Job's " comforters " did. 

There is constant need for true comforters. 
Barnabas is called, in the common version 
of the Bible, a " son of consolation." No 
doubt he was a sunshiny man. No other one 
can be a consoler. When Barnabas went in- 
to a sick-room, we are quite sure his presence 
was a benediction. When he visited the 
homes of those who were sorrowing, he car- 
ried the light of heaven in his face, and his 
words were full of uplifting. It is a great 
thing to be a son or daughter of consola- 
tion. Christ himself was a wonderful com- 
forter. The words he spoke were words of 
eternal truth on which we may lay our heads 
and find that we are leaning on the arm of 
God. No doubt, too, the Holy Spirit is a 
comforter. He brings the truth of eter- 

[88] 



Ci^e flDne 2211^0 ^tanDjs :Bt 

nal life to those who are bereft. He brings 
the gentleness and healing of divine love to 
hurt hearts. The name Comforter describes 
well one kind of work the Spirit does in the 
world. 

But the best scholars agree that " com- 
forter " is not the word which most fully and 
clearly gives the sense of the Greek word 
which our Lord used. It is Paraclete. The 
word is used only a few times in the New Tes- 
tament, and only by St. John. In the Fourth 
Gospel it is always translated Comforter. 
Then, in St. John's First Epistle, it is trans- 
lated Advocate. Advocate is perhaps the 
more accurate translation — not merely a 
comforter who consoles us in trouble, and 
makes us stronger to endure sorrow, but one 
who stands for us. The word Advocate is 
very suggestive. One of its meanings is, a 
person who stands by; strictly, a person 
called to the side of another. The thought 
of one who stands by is very suggestive. 

It may be said that this is one of the finest 
definitions of a friend that could be given. 

[89] 



Ci^e istautv of ^elf^Control 

He must be one who always stands by you. 
This does not mean in a human friend that 
he must always be close to you, always mani- 
festing affection in some practical way, al- 
ways speaking words of cheer. He may be 
miles away in space, but you know that he 
is always loyal to you, true to you, your 
friend, wherever he may be. He always 
stands by you. He may not be able to do 
many things for you. Indeed, it is but little 
that a friend, your best friend, really can do 
at any time for you. He cannot lift away 
your load — no other one can bear your bur- 
den for you. Each one must bear his own 
burden. Each one must meet his own life's 
questions, make his own decisions, endure his 
own troubles, fight his own battles, accept his 
own responsibilities. The office of a friend 
is not to do things for you, to make life easy 
for you. 

But you know that he always stands by 
you. You know that if ever you need him in 
any way and turn to him, he will not fail you 
nor disappoint you ; that if you do not see him 

[90] 



Ci^e €>ne mt^o ^tanDis i$t 

for months, or even for years, nor hear from 
him, and if you then should go to him with 
some question or some appeal, you will find 
him unchanged, the same staunch, strong, 
faithful friend as always. Though your cir- 
cumstances have changed, from wealth to 
poverty, from influence to powerlessness, 
from popular favor to obscurity, from 
strength to weakness, still your friend is the 
same, stands by you as he did before, meets 
you with the old cordiality, the old kindness, 
the old helpfulness. Your friend is one who 
stands by you. That is the kind of friend 
the Holy Spirit is. You are sure he is al- 
ways the same, always faithful and true. 

Jesus said the Father would give " another 
Comforter," that is, one like Jesus himself. 
He was an advocate for his disciples, who 
always stood by them, their comrade, their 
defender, and their shelter in danger. His 
friendship was unchanged through the years. 
" Loved once " was never said of him. Hav- 
ing loved, he loved unto the end. His dis- 
ciples failed him, grieved him, disappointed 

[91] 



%^t QBeautv of ^elf*Control 

him, but when they came back to him they 
found him the same, waiting to receive them. 
Peter denied him in the hour of his deepest 
need, saying he did not know him ; but when 
Jesus was risen again, the first one of his 
disciples he asked for was Peter, and when 
Peter found him, he was still standing by, 
the same dear, loyal friend. Now he said 
that they would receive another comforter 
when he was gone. He wanted them to un- 
derstand that he was not really going away 
from them. They would not see any face, 
would not feel any hands, but he would be 
there, as he always had been, — still standing 
by. They would lose nothing by his going 
away. Indeed he would not be gone from 
them at all. In the Paraclete he would still 
be with them and would still be their Com- 
forter, their Comrade. 

Jesus tells us that the Comforter is more 
to us than he himself was to his disciples. 
He said that it was expedient for them that 
he should go away, for then the Comforter 
would come. Think what it was to have their 

[92] 



Ci^e flDne mt^o ^tanD^ OBt 

Master for a personal friend. There never 
was such another Friend. Think of his 
gentleness, his tenderness, his sympathy, his 
kindness, the inspiration of his life. Think 
of the shelter he was to them, the strength, 
the encouragement. Then remember what 
he said the Holy Spirit would be — " another 
Comforter," one like Christ, and that it 
would be more to us to have the Holy Spirit 
for our friend than if Jesus had stayed with 
us. He is everything to us that Jesus was to 
his personal friends. He is our Advocate. He 
alwaj^s stands by us, and for us. His love is 
unchanging. We talk of the love of the 
Father. We are his children. He loves us. 
He comforts us with his wonderful tenderness. 
We talk and sing of the love of Christ as 
the most marvelous revelation of love the 
world ever saw. But we do not speak or sing 
so much of the love of the Spirit. Yet the 
Spirit's love is just as wonderful as the 
Father's or the Son's. For one thing, he 
loves us enough to come and live in our 
hearts. Does that seem a little thing.? We 

[93] 



Ci^e I3eautt of ^elf^Control 

speak a great deal, especially at Christmas 
time, of the condescension of the eternal Son 
of God in coming to earth, to be born in a 
stable and cradled in a manger. Is it a less 
wonderful condescension for the Holy Spirit 
to make your heart his home, to be born 
there, to live there as your Guest? Think 
what a place a human heart is. The stable 
where Jesus was born was lowly, but it was 
clean. Are our hearts clean .'^ Think of the 
unholy thoughts, the unholy desires, the im- 
pure things, the unlovingness, the jealousy, 
the bitterness, the hate, all the sin of our 
hearts. Then think of the love of the Spirit 
that makes him willing to live in such a foul 
place, in order to cleanse us and make us 
good and holy. 

The love of the Spirit is shown in his won- 
drous patience with us in all our sinfulness, 
while he lives in us and deals with us in the 
culturing of our Christian life. We speak 
often of the patient love of Christ with his 
disciples the three years he was with them, 
having them in his family, at his table, en- 

[94] 



Ci^e £Dne oai^o ^tanDjs "Bt 

during their ignorance, their dullness, their 
narrowness, their petty strifes, their un- 
faithfulness. It was a marvelous love that 
never grew weary of them, that loved on in 
spite of all that so tried his love, that en- 
dured the hate of men, their plottings, their 
treacheries, their cruelty. We never can 
understand the depth of the love of Christ 
in enduring all that he endured in saving the 
world. But think also of the love of the Holy 
Spirit in what he suffers in his work with us. 
St. Paul beseeches us that we grieve not the 
Holy Spirit. The word " grieve '' in the orig- 
inal is from the same root as the word used in 
the Gospel when we are told that the soul of 
Jesus in the Garden was exceeding sorrowful. 
Think of that. We make a Gethsemane in 
our heart for the Holy Spirit every time we 
doubt him, grieve him by our thoughts, our 
disobediences. 

A young Christian woman relates an ex- 
perience which greatly saddened her. She 
had a girl friend whom she had long loved 
deeply. The two were inseparable. They 

[95] 



i Ci^e QBeautt of ^elf^Control 

trusted each other implicitly. One who tells 
the story says she had regarded her friend 
as like an angel in the truth and beauty of 
her life. She never had had a shadow of 
doubt concerning her character and conduct. 
Then she learned that this girl had been 
living a double Hfe for ye^rs. The discov- 
ery appalled her. At first she refused to be- 
lieve it, but the evidence was so clear, so 
unmistakable, that she could not but believe 
it, and it almost killed her. It was painful 
to hear her words and see her distress. Then 
she wrote : " I understand now a little of 
the bitter sorrow of my Saviour in Geth- 
semane, as he drank the cup of his people's 
sins." 

If a human friend can be thus broken- 
hearted over the sin of a friend, how the Holy 
Spirit must suffer in his cherishing of us, in 
his watching for our sanctification, in his 
wondrous brooding over us — how he must 
grieve when we fall into sin! 



[96] 



toW^ "hm at i^ome 



"Let us he kind ; 
The sunset tints vnll soon he in the west. 
Too late the flowers are laid then on the quiet hreasi — 

Let us be kind. 
And when the angel guides have sought and found us. 
Their hands shall link the broken ties of earth that bound us. 
And heaven and home shall brighten all around us — 
Let us he kind." 

Quoted by " The British Weekly." 



VIII 



JLoije '0 ism at i^ome 





1 



N the home love should come 
to its best. There it should 
reach its richest beauty. 
The song it sings there 
should be its sweetest. All 
love's marvelous possibilities should be real- 
ized in the life of the home. Whatever love 
may achieve in any other relation or con- 
dition, home is the place where its lessons 
should be most perfectly learned. Home 
ought to be the holiest place on earth. It 
is to be a place of confidence. We are to 
trust each other perfectly there. There is 
never to be a shadow of doubt, suspicion, or 
want of confidence in the home fellowships. 
There should need to be no locked doors, no 
hidden secrets, no disloyalties, no enmities, 
no diverse interests, in the home relations. 
We should understand each other there. We 
should live together in perfect frankness and 

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Ci^e OBeautt of ^elf* Control 

confidence. Each should honor the other. 
We should see good and never evil, the one 
in the other. We should believe in each 
other. Our life together in the home should 
be characterized by perfect truth. Famil- 
iarity should never make us treat one another 
in any way that would give offence. The 
most familiar intimacy should not permit us 
ever to disregard the proprieties and ameni- 
ties of the truest refinement. We should 
be more courteous in our homes than any- 
where else in the world. 

All the Christian virtues should find their 
exemplification in the home life. " Love suf- 
fereth long and is kind." That is, love never 
wearies in suffering whether it be in its ser- 
vice of others or in the enduring of unkind- 
ness at the hands of others. Love continu- 
ally demands self-denial and sacrifice for the 
sake of others. When we say to another in 
whatever relation, " I am going to be your 
friend," we do not begin to know what it 
is going to mean to us to keep our word. We 
have to be always denying ourselves, giving 

[100] 



tou '^ 'hm at i^ome 

up our own way, sacrificing our rights, giv- 
ing our friend the pleasures we had expected 
to enjoy ourselves. 

The story of friendship anywhere is a story 
of cost and suffering, but it is in the home 
that it must suffer the most, make the great- 
est sacrifices. When husband and wife clasp 
hands at the marriage altar, they can fulfill 
their covenant of love only by mutual loving 
unto death. It may cost either of them a 
great deal to love as they have promised to 
do, until death separates them. Here is a 
man who loves his wife with a devoted affec- 
tion. For ten years she has been a help- 
less invalid, and he has carried her from the 
bed to the chair, and up and down stairs, and 
has ministered to her in a most beautiful way, 
failing in nothing that she needed or craved, 
pouring out his life's best treasures to give 
her comfort or pleasure. This is ideal. So 
it should be in all the home relations. Love 
that stops at no cost, at no sacrifice, should 
be the law of the home life. 

It should be the same with all the qualities 
[101] 



Ci^e OBeautt of ^elf-Control 

of love. We are to exercise patience with 
every person we may meet, in all the rela- 
tions of life, but we should show the sweetest 
and most Christlike patience in our own 
homes. Kindness is the great law of Chris- 
tian life. It should be the universal law. We 
should be kind to everyone, not only to those 
who treat us with love, but also to those who 
are ungentle to us, returning to them love for 
hate. But in our own home and toward our 
own, our kindness should not only be unvary- 
ing, but be always exceptionally tender. 

A writer suggests that members of a fam- 
ily, when they separate for the night or even 
for the briefest stay, should never part in 
any but an affectionate way, lest they shall 
never meet again. Two incidents illustrate 
the importance of this rule. A distinguished 
man, when much past middle life, related an 
experience which occurred in his own home in 
his young manhood. At the breakfast table 
one morning he and a younger brother had 
a sharp quarrel about some unimportant 
matter. He confessed that he was most un- 

[ 102 ] 



note '^ 'Bm at l^ome 

brotherly in his words, speaking with bitter- 
ness. The brother rose and left the table 
and went to his business, very angry. Be- 
fore noon the younger man died suddenly in 
his ofBce. When, twenty years afterward, 
the older brother spoke of the occurrence, he 
said that it had cast a shadow over all his 
life. He could never forgive himself for his 
part in the bitter quarrel. He had never 
ceased to regret with sore pain that no oppor- 
tunity had come to him to confess his fault 
and seek forgiveness and reconciliation. 

The other incident was of the parting of 
a workingman and his wife. He was going 
forth to his day's duties and there was a 
peculiar tenderness in his mood and in their 
good-bye that morning. He and his wife had 
their prayer together after breakfast. Then 
he kissed the babies, sleeping in their cribs, 
and returned a second time to look into their 
sweet faces. The parting at the door never 
had been so tender as it was that morning. 
Before half the day was gone the men brought 
him home dead. The wife got great com- 

[ 103] 



Cl^e Beauty of telecontrol 

fort in her sorrow from the memory of the 
morning's parting. If their last words to- 
gether had been marked by unkindness, by 
wrangling or quarreling, or even by indiffer- 
ence, or lack of tenderness, her grief would 
have been harder to bear. But the loving- 
ness of the last parting took away much of 
the bitterness of the sorrow. 

If we keep ourselves ever mindful of the 
criticalness of life, that any day may be the 
last in our home fellowships, it will do much 
to make us gentle and kind to each other. 
We will not act selfishly any hour, for it may 
be our last hour together. We will not let 
strife mar the good cheer of our home life 
any day, for we may not have another day. 

Not much is told of our Lord's home life, 
but the few glimpses we have of it assure 
us that it was wondrously loving. Jesus was 
sinless, and we are sure, therefore, that noth- 
ing he ever said or did caused the slightest 
bitterness in any home heart. He never lost 
his temper, never grew angry, never showed 
any impatience, never was stubborn or will- 

[ 104] 



tou '0 ism at l^ome 

ful, never was selfish, never did anything 
thoughtless, never failed in kindness. We 
have enough hints of his gracious love for his 
mother down to his last kindly thought of her 
on his cross, to make us sure that he contin- 
ued to the close to be to her the perfect son. 
It will help us in learning our lesson in 
its details if we will look at some Scripture 
words about love and apply them to the life 
of the home. " Love suflfereth long, and is 
kind." There come experiences in the life 
of many homes in which one has to suffer, 
make sacrifices, endure pain or loss, bear 
burdens almost without measure, for the sake 
of the others. This is Christlike, though 
costly. " She is wasting her life," said one;, 
indignantly, of the eldest daughter of a fam- 
ily. " She is denying herself all leisure, all 
good times, staying at home, working for the 
other children and her little mother, while 
they go out into society and have their 
pleasures. She is pouring out her life to give 
them the privileges they crave." Yes, but 
always some must toil while others rest ; some 

[105] 



> Ci^e OBeautt of ^elf-Control 

must bear burdens while others go tripping 
along without question or care ; some must 
sacrifice to the uttermost, while others in- 
dulge themselves. It may seem unfair, un- 
just, yet that is love, and it is by love that 
the world lives. The oil wastes in the lamp, 
but the room glows with light. One life is 
consumed in service, misses the world^s 
pleasures, goes without rest, but the home is 
made joyous and all things go smoothly. It 
scarcely seems fair to the one who sacrifices 
so, but that is love, and love is the greatest 
force for good and blessing in the world. 

There is more of the picture. There are 
few more hateful things in the world than 
envy, and in no other place is envy so hateful 
as when it appears in the home. Love drives 
out envy. " Love vaunteth not itself, is not 
puffed up." Love is humble, lowly, does 
not strut, does not assert itself, does not 
assume superiority. There are homes in 
which there is too much pompous vaunting, 
where one lords it over others. But it is 
most unbeautiful, most utterly unloving. 

[106] 



tou '0 OBejSt at f ome 

" Doth not behave itself unseemly." Any- 
thing that is rude, ungentle, unrefined, 
discourteous, is unseemly, unfit. So love 
takes note of coarseness in behavior, of bad 
manners. " I am not required to mind every- 
body's tender points," one may say. " I 
cannot be ruled by other people's sensitive- 
ness." Yet one who loves as Jesus loved 
is considerate of others even if others are 
oversensitive. That is what thoughtfulness 
teaches. Boorishness in others never makes 
it right for us to be boorish in return. It is 
in the home that this refinement is most beau- 
tiful and does most for making happiness. 
The love that is most divine does not behave 
itself unseemly. Good people may be awk- 
ward, may not understand the rules of eti- 
quette, may unconsciously violate the dictates 
of fashion at table or in society, and yet not 
behave unseemly. What is required is the 
gentle spirit in the heart, that would not 
give pain to anyone, though it may know 
nothing of the arbitrary rules of fashion. 
For one may never fail in the smallest 

[107] 



Clje QBeaut^ of ^elf-Conttol 

things of society manners, and yet in heart 
may be most unrefined and unseemly. 

The lesson runs on. " Love seeketh not 
its own." This is the heart of the whole 
matter. Seeking its own is the poison of all 
life. Love never seeks its own — it always 
thinks of the other one. If this were the uni- 
versal rule in our homes there would be no 
disputes, no strifes, no asserting of ourselves ; 
each would serve the other. " Love is not 
provoked." Getting provoked is the danger 
always in every place where lives meet and 
mingle. Many people are touchy and fly 
into anger at the slightest provocation. This 
is the bane of too much home life — it is hurt 
ofttimes by impatience and irritability. It is 
given to quick retorts. It resents suggestion 
and question. It does not restrain itself nor 
check its bitter feeling. It is given to hasty 
speech. The love that is not provoked gives 
only gentle replies, however rude and irri- 
tating the words spoken may be. Such lov- 
ing, with its soft answers that turn away 
wrath, is a prime secret of home happiness. 

[108] 



toU 'js OBejst at f ome 

These are only a few of the specific quali- 
ties of love which are mentioned in a few 
verses of one chapter of the New Testament. 
Many more might be cited. These rules of 
love were not given specifically with refer- 
ence to home life, but as to the way a 
Christian should live anywhere. They are 
suggested here as touching the home, because 
home is where love should always reach its 
best. Home should be love's school; there 
we should learn love's lessons. Then when we 
go out into the world and take up our tasks 
and duties we will be ready for them, and the 
lessons we have learned in the school of home 
we shall go on practicing in daily life. 

Is it not time we tried to make more of 
our homes? Is it not time we got more love 
into them? For one thing, there is pitiful 
need of cheer and encouragement in most 
homes. There is more blame heard than 
praise. There are those who give their lives 
without reserve for the good of the house- 
hold, and scarcely ever hear a word of thanks. 
How much comfort and help it would give to 

[109] 



Ci^e QBeautt of ^elf^Conttol 

faithful household servants to hear now and 
then a word of appreciation ! How it would 
cheer many a wife and mother whose life is 
given out in untiring work, if she heard words 
of praise from those for whom she lives ! It 
is not monuments when they are dead that 
women want — they would rather a thousand 
times have a simple word of kindness and ap- 
preciation, day by day, as they toil. A poet 
puts into the lips of one of these unappre- 
ciated wives these words : 



Carve not a stone when I am dead. 

The praises which remorseful mourners give 
To women's graves, a tardy recompense; 

But speak them while I live. 
Forget me when I die; the violets 

Above my rest will blossom just as blue 
Nor miss thy tears; e'en nature's self forgets: 

But while I live be true." 



Says Hugh Black : " In our relation with 
each other, there is usually more advantage 
to be reaped from friendly encouragement 
than from friendly correction. There are 
more lives spoiled by undue harshness than 
by undue gentleness. More good work is 

[110] 



toU 'js ism at l^ome 



lost from want of appreciation than from too 
much of it ; and certainly it is not the function 
of friendship to do the critic's work." 

No crowns in heaven will be brighter than 
those shall wear who have lived out love's les- 
sons in their own homes. Nearly everyone has 
known some home, nearly all of whose light 
has come from one. member of the household. 
Frederick W. Robertson, referring to such a 
life, asks : "What was the secret of her power? 
What had she done? Absolutely nothing ; but 
radiant smiles, beaming good humor, the tact 
of divining what everyone wanted, told that 
she had got out of self and had learned to 
think of others ; so that at one time it showed 
itself in deprecating the quarrel, which lower- 
ing brows and raised tones already showed to 
be impending, by sweet words ; at another by 
smoothing an invalid's pillow; at another by 
soothing a sobbing child; at another by hu- 
moring and softening a father who had re- 
turned weary and ill-tempered from the ir- 
ritating cares of business. None but her saw 
those things." 

[Ill] 



mi^at abont QBati Cempet; ? 



** I would he true, for there are those who trust me; 
I would he pure, for there are those who care; 
I would be stronQy for there is much to suffer; 
I would be brave, for there is much to dare. 

**/ would befriend to all — the foe, the friendless; 
I would he giving, and forget the gift; 
I would be humble, for I know my weakness; 

I would look up — and laugh — and love — and lift.'* 




IX 

mi^at ahout I5an Cemper? 

HAT about bad temper? 
An English writer said 
some time since that more 
than half of us are bad tem- 
pered. He gave the fig- 
ures. He arranged to have about two 
thousand people put unconsciously under es- 
pionage as to their ordinary temper, and 
then had careful reports of the results tabu- 
lated. The footing up is decidedly unflat- 
tering to the two thousand people who were 
thus treated. More than half of them — 
to be entirely accurate, fifty-two per centum 
of them — are set down as bad tempered in 
various degrees. The dictionary has been 
well nigh exhausted in giving the different 
shades of badness. Acrimonious, aggressive, 
arbitrary, bickering, capricious, captious, 
choleric, contentious, crotchety, despotic, 
domineering, easily offended, gloomy, 

[115] 



Ci^e I3eautt of ^elf*Control 

grumpy, hasty, huffy, irritable, morose, ob- 
stinate, peevish, sulky, surly, vindictive, — 
these are some of the qualifying words. 
There are employed in all, forty-six terms, 
none of which describes a sweet temper. 

We do not like to believe that the case is 
so serious — that a little more than every 
second one of us is unamiable in some offen- 
sive degree. It is much easier to confess 
our neighbor's faults and infirmities than our 
own; so, therefore, quietly taking refuge 
for ourselves among the forty-eight per 
centum of good-natured people, we shall 
probably be willing to admit that a great 
many of the people we know have at times 
rather uncommendable tempers. They are 
easily provoked. They fly into a passion on 
every slight occasion. They are haughty, 
domineering, peevish, fretful, or resentful. 

What is even worse, most of them appear 
to make no effort to grow out of their in- 
firmities of disposition. The unripe finiit 
does not come to mellowness in the passing 
years. The roughness is not polished off to 

[116] 



m]^at ahout OBati Cempet? 

reveal the diamond's lustrous beauty. The 
same impetuous pride, vanity, selfishness, and 
other disagreeable qualities remain in the 
life year after year. The person does not 
seem to grow any sweeter. When there is a 
struggle to overcome one's faults and grow 
out of them, and where the progress toward 
better and more beautiful spiritual character 
year after year is perceptible, though the 
progress be ever so slow, we should have 
patience. But where one appears uncon- 
scious of one's blemishes, and makes no ef- 
fort to conquer one's failings, there is little 
ground for encouragement. Hope starts In 
a life when one begins to try to overcome the 
evil, to cast out the wrong, to strive for the 
likeness of Christ. 

When a man thinks he is perfect, he Is 
not only pitifully imperfect, but he is In a 
condition in which no one can do anything 
to help him. He Is unconscious of any lack, 
and his lack Is hopeless. But when a man 
begins to realize that he is weak and faulty 
and Incomplete, he Is ready to begin to grow 

[117] 



Ci^e OBeautt of telecontrol 

out of his faults and is at the beginning of 
a struggle which will end in the victory over 
himself and growth into completeness of 
character. 

Bad temper is such a disfigurement of 
character, and besides works such harm to 
oneself and one's neighbors, that no one 
should spare any pains or cost to have it 
cured. The ideal Christian Kfe is one of un- 
broken kindliness. It is dominated by love, 
the love whose portrait is so exquisitely 
drawn for us in the immortal Thirteenth of 
First Corinthians. " It suffereth long, and 
is kind. It envieth not. It vaunteth not it- 
self, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself 
unseemly, seeketh not its own. Is not pro- 
voked." That is the picture. Then we 
have but to turn to the Gospel pages to find 
the story of a Life in which all these beauti- 
ful things were realized. Jesus never lost 
his temper. He lived among people who 
tried him at every point, some by their dull- 
ness, others by their bitter enmity and perse- 
cution, but he never failed in sweetness, in 

[118] 



m^at about I3ali Cempet ? 

patience, in self-denying love. Like those 
flowers that give out their perfume only when 
crushed, Hke the odoriferous wood which 
bathes with fragrance the ax which hews it, 
the life of Christ yielded only the sweetest 
love to the rough impact of men's rudeness 
and wrong. That is the pattern on which 
we should strive to fashion our life and char- 
acter. Every outbreak of violent temper, 
every shade of ugliness in disposition, mars 
the radiant loveliness of the picture we are 
seeking to have fashioned in our souls. 
Whatever is not lovely is unlovely. 

There is another phase; bad-tempered 
people are continually hurting others, oft- 
times their best friends. Some people are 
sulky, and one person's sulkiness casts a 
shadow over a whole household. Other 
people are oversensitive, ever watching for 
slights and offended by the merest trifles, so 
that even their closest friends have to be al- 
ways on the watch, lest they offend them. 
Others are despotic and will brook no kindly 
suggestion nor listen to any expression of 

[119] 



Cl^e I3eautt of telecontrol 

opinion. Others are so quarrelsome that 
even the meekest and gentlest person cannot 
live peaceably with them. Whatever may be 
the special characteristic of a bad temper, it 
makes only pain and humiliation for the per- 
son's friends. 

Usually, bad temper is accompanied by a 
sharp tongue. A brother and sister are said 
often to have passed months without speak- 
ing to each other, though eating at the same 
table and sleeping under the same roof. 
There recently died, a man, who, for twelve 
years, it was currently said, had never spoken 
to his wife, nor had she to him, although three 
times every day they sat at the same table. 
She would serve him with his coffee and he 
would serve her with the meat, but their 
glumness never relaxed into a word of 
courtesy. Bad temper sometimes runs to 
unyielding silence. Such silence is not of 
the kind the proverb calls golden. Usually, 
however, a bad-tempered person finds a 
tongue and speaks out the hateful feelings 
of his heart. There is no limit to the pain 

[ 120 ] 



tm^at atiout QBaD Cempet ? 

and the harm which their words produce in 
gentle hearts. 

" These clumsy feet, still in the mire. 
Go crushing blossoms without end; 
These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust 
Among the heartstrings of a friend. 

"The ill-timed truth we might have kept — 

Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung ? 
The word we had not sense to say — 
Who knows how grandly it had rung ?" 

Is there no cure for this? Must a bad- 
tempered person always remain bad tem- 
pered? Or is there a way by which the evil 
may be transformed? No doubt the grace 
of God is able to make the old new. There 
is no temper so obdurately bad that it can- 
not be trained into sweetness. The grace of 
God can take the most unlovely life and make 
it into the image of Christ. As in all moral 
changes, however, grace does not work in- 
dependently of human volition and exertion. 
God always works helpfully with those who 
strive to reach Christlikeness. We must 
struggle to obtain the victory over our own 
evil disposition and habits, although it is 

[121] 



Ci^e OBeaut^ of ^elf^Conttol 

only through Christ that we can fully suc- 
ceed. He will not make us conquerors unless 
we enter the battle. We have a large and 
necessary share in the culture of our own 
character. The bad-tempered man will never 
become good tempered until he deliberately 
sets for himself the task and enters resolutely 
and persistently upon its accomplishment. 
The transformation will never come of 
itself, even in a Christian. People do not 
grow out of an ugly temper into sweet re- 
finement as a peach ripens from sourness 
into lusciousness. 

What is it exactly that is to be accom- 
plished? It is not the destruction of the 
temper. Temper is good in its place. The 
task to be achieved is to win self-control. 
The truly strong man is he who is strong in 
temper, that is, who has strong passions and 
feelings, capable of great anger, and then 
has perfect self-mastery. The task to be 
set, therefore, in self-discipline, is the gain- 
ing of mastery over every feeling and emo- 
tion, so as to be able to restrain every im- 

[ 122 ] 



m^at about l3aD Cemper ? 

pulse, and never to act unadvisedly. " The 
best characters are made by vigorous and 
persistent resistance to evil tendencies ; whose 
amiability has been built upon the ruins of 
ill temper, and whose generosity springs from 
an overmastered and transformed selfishness. 
Such a character, built up in the presence of 
enemies, has far more attraction than one 
which is natively pleasing." 

Then there is need of a higher standard of 
attainment in this regard than many people 
seem to set for themselves. We never rise 
higher than our ideals. The perfect beauty 
of Christ should always be visioned in our 
hearts, as that which we would attain for 
ourselves. The honor of our Master's name 
should impel us to strive ever toward Christ- 
likeness in spirit and disposition. We repre- 
sent our Master in this world. People can- 
not see him, and they must look at us to see 
in our lives a little at least of what he is 
like. Whatever great work we may do for 
Christ, if we fail to live out his life of 
patience and forbearance, we fail in an 

[123] 



Ci^e Beauty of ^elf^Conttol 

essential part of our duty as Christians. 
" The Lord's servant must ... be gentle." 
Then we never can be largely useful in 
the world while our daily conduct is marred 
by frequent outbursts of anger and other 
exhibitions of temper. Only as our own lives 
shine in the brightness of holy affectionate- 
ness and our hearts and lips distill the sweet- 
ness of patience and gentleness can we ful- 
fill our mission in this world as Christ's true 
messengers to men. The thing in others 
which irritates us is ofttimes balanced by 
something in us which looks just as unlovely 
in their eyes, and which just as sorely tries 
their forbearance toward us. 

"Search thine own heart. What paineth thee 
In others, in thyself may be. 
All dust is frail, all flesh is weak: 
Be thou the true man thou dost seek.'* 

If we think our neighbors are hard to live 
with, they probably think the same of us ; 
then who shall tell in whom lies the greater 
degree of fault? It is certain at least that 
a really good-natured person can rarely ever 

[124] 



mii^at about QBaD Cemper ? 

be drawn into a quarrel with any one. He 
is resolutely determined that he will not be 
a partner in any unseemly strife. He would 
rather suffer wrongfully than offer any re- 
taliation. He has learned to bear and to 
forbear. Then by his gentle tact he is able 
to conciliate those who are angry. 

The fault must never be ours, if there is a 
difference or a quarrel which we cannot com- 
pose. " As much as in us lies," St. Paul 
tells us, " we should be at peace with all men." 
A wise man says : "Every man takes care that 
his neighbors shall not cheat him, but a day 
comes when he begins to take care that he does 
not cheat his neighbors. Then all goes well. 
He has changed his market cart into a 
chariot of the sun." So long as a man sees 
only the quarrelsome temper of his neighbor, 
he is not far toward saintliness ; but when he 
has learned to watch and to try to control 
his own temper, and to weep over his own 
infirmities, he is on the way to God, and will 
soon conquer his own weakness. We find in 
the end that it is ourself that needs watching. 

[ 125 ] 



W^t OBeautt of ^elf^Control 

Life is too short for us to spend even one 
day or one hour of it in bickering and strife ; 
love is too sacred to be lacerated and torn 
by the ugly briers of sharp temper. Surely 
we ought to learn to be patient with others, 
since God has to show every day such infinite 
patience toward us. Is not the very essence 
of true love the spirit that is not easily pro- 
voked, that beareth all things? Can we not, 
then, train our lives to sweeter gentleness? 
Can we not learn to be touched even a little 
roughly without resenting it and growing 
angry? Can we not bear little injuries and 
apparent injustices without flying into an 
unseemly rage? Can we not have in us 
something of the mind of Christ which will 
enable us, like him, to endure all wrong and 
injury, and give back no word or look of 
bitterness? The way over which we and our 
friend walk together is too short to be spent 
in wrangling. 



[126] 



Cl^e d^nfiagement Etng 



/ 



' Two shall he horn, the whole wide world apart. 
And speak in different tongues and have no thought 
Each of the other s being and have no heed; 
And these oW unknown seas to unknown lands 
Shall cross, escaping wreck, defying death. 
And all unconsciously shape every act. 
And bend each wandering step to this one end — 
That one day out of darkness they shall meet 
And read life's meaning in each other s eyes,'* 



Cl^e Engagement IRing 




hour in all a woman's 
life means more to her than 
the hour when she knows 
that she is loved and that 
she loves. Her heart has 
found its home. She has been chosen from 
among all women in the world by a noble 
and worthy man to be the queen of his hfe. 
Her heart responds to the affection that has 
poured itself upon her. She is very happy. 
Her happiness makes her face radiant. 

This hour ought to be with her a time 
of deep thoughtfulness. It should be a time 
of fearlessness. Perfect love casts out fear. 
No girl is ready to announce her engage- 
ment if she is anxious and afraid in any de- 
gree concerning the matter. She must have 
perfect trust in the man to whom she has 
pledged her love. If she has not, she should 
wait longer till she is sure. 

[ 129] 



Ci^e oeeautt of ^elf*Conttol 

In her thought of what she is about to do, 
she must think much on the question, whether 
the man who asks her hand will meet all the 
needs of her nature. It is not enough that 
he is able to provide a home of comfort for 
her to live in. This is not all that is requisite 
for her happiness. She may have a palace 
of luxury and may not lack anything that 
money can provide, and yet be miserable. 

It is not enough, either, that he is a man 
of ability and rank. He may stand high 
among men and may appear to be in every 
way noble and worthy. He may be gifted, 
talented, brilliant. He may seem to have in 
him all the essential qualities of manliness. 
He may be brave and strong and true. 
Women are attracted by greatness. They 
worship the heroic. They admire men who 
can do great things. Weakness and timidity 
they dislike. They are not won by cowardice 
and inefficiency. But the man who is bold, 
fearless, who is not intimidated by danger, 
whom no difficulty can daunt and no obstacle 
can defeat, appeals to them irresistibly. 

[130] 



But strength is not all a woman needs in 
the man to whom she would commit herself 
for the keeping and cherishing which a hus- 
band promises In the marriage contract. He 
may be brave and powerful, and yet may lack 
tenderness. Strength and tenderness are 
united in the Ideal life, but strength with- 
out gentleness will make no woman happy. 
She craves love. Her heart needs tender- 
ness. There will come days In her life when 
her heart is hungry, when she Is In sorrow, 
when she Is suffering, and then even the 
noblest strength will not be to her all she 
craves. The most brilliant natural gifts 
will not then satisfy her. She wants then to 
be loved. She must have the gentle word, 
the kindly sympathy, the soothing touch. 
Courage Is a fine quality, but courage may 
be brutal. It may be rude, tyrannical, piti- 
less. True, manly courage is as gentle as a 
mother with her child. 

Jane Carlyle said, " I married for am- 
bition ; Carlyle has exceeded all that my wild- 
est hopes ever imagined of him — and I am 

[131] 



Cl^e Beautr of telecontrol 

miserable." She married a genius, and got 
a husband who broke her heart by his churl- 
ish tyranny. The world praised him, and 
wrote his name high up on fame's column ; 
but what comfort was that to the gentle 
woman who was crushed by his miserable un- 
gentleness and never heard a kindly word 
from his lips? The ideal man is brave. He 
is true. He is strong. He is upright. But 
if a man is brave and true and strong and 
upright, and yet is rude, unfeeling, and un- 
gentle, he is not going to be a comfort to his 
wife through the varying experiences of her 
life. There will come days when amid all the 
luxury and splendor her husband will pro- 
vide, her heart will cry out for simple ten- 
derness. There will be hours when she would 
give all the wealth, the honor, the brilliant 
name, the world's adulation, which her 
husband brings to her, for something of the 
sweetness of common kindness. The girl 
should think of this when she is planning for 
her marriage. 

She must ask another question — ^ whether 
[ 132] 



she is able to fulfill her part in the marriage 
compact into which she is about to enter. 
Can she meet the needs of the man who asks 
her to be his wife? Can she inspire in him 
the latent qualities of nobleness and power 
that wait for the touch of a woman's hand? 
Can she do her part in making him the man 
he ought to be, the man he may be? It will 
not be enough that she have the expectation 
of fine social position, of a brilliant marriage ; 
if she has in her mind the true thought of 
the matter, that which will press most heavily 
upon her heart will be what she is going to 
make of herself, the woman she is going to 
be. She is loved, and love should wake up 
in her all the slumbering powers of her be- 
ing. In one of the Psalms there is a sugges- 
tive prayer: 

"Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp: 
I myself will awake right early." 

There is a glory in every one of us, some 
power of nobleness, some hidden beauty, some 
possible worth, some seed which may grow 

[133] 



m^t I3eautr of ^eif Control 

into a heavenly plant, some bud which may 
open into a wondrous flower. The com- 
monest life has glory in it, but it may yet be 
sleeping. It is a holy moment when we be- 
come even dimly conscious that we have any 
measure of glory in us, and begin really to 
pray that it may be awakened. It is a 
blessed hour when a young person for the 
first time prays, " Awake up, my glory," and 
then declares, " I myself will awake right 
early.'' In too many the call to awake is 
never heard and the glory sleeps on. 

Love is an experience which, if allowed to 
work itself out freely, calls for the awakening 
of the best that is in the life. It stirs the 
whole being. The prayer in the old Psalm 
reveals the consciousness of music slumbering 
in the soul, and calls for its awakening. 
" Awake, psaltery and harp." There are 
strings with marvelous capacity for music 
which have never given out a note. The poet 
calls upon these to awake. There is music in 
our lives which is sleeping, and never has 
been waked up. Love should waken every 

[134] 



sleeping chord. When love has come into 
a girl's heart she should become aware of 
a thousand possibilities of beauty, of sweet- 
ness, of noble character in herself. She is 
not yet the girl she may become, ought to 
become. Love is waking her up, and she 
begins to feel a thousand longings for the 
lovely things she sees in her vision. The 
revealings she has are glimpses of what she 
may be, of what God wants her to be, and she 
should strive at once to reach them. 

Life thus grows serious to the girl to whom 
love has come. She must set herself the task 
of becoming the woman God wants her to be. 
Love is calling for her best. Life is trivial 
and unworthy if it calls her only to an empty 
happiness such as sometimes young people 
think of as life's best. If she is worthy, and 
if she has any true conception of the finest 
possibilities of life, the vision love wakes in 
her soul is of the blossoming out of all the 
richest things until they have reached their 
best and highest. One writes, " The only 
conceivable thing that can be named as the 

[135] 



m^t istantv of telecontrol 

object of life is character; for the simple 
reason that it is the only thing that lasts, — 
to take this self, made up of heart and mind 
and will, and train it in the line of its creative 
design, bring out all its powers, train it 
away from its faults and defects, make it 
strong and compact and substantial — a 
real thing, harmonious, true, the very thing 
that it was designed to be." Nothing less 
than this should be the aim of the girl who 
IS dreaming of her marriage. Here is a 
worthy imploring: 

"For God's sake, be as beautiful 
As the white form that dwelleth in my heart; 
Yet better still, as that ideal pure 
That waketh in thee when thou prayest God 
Or helpest thy poor neighbor. 

Justify my faith 
In womanhood's white-handed nobleness. 
And thee, its revelation unto me." 

This IS the call of the deepest heart of every 
true man to the woman he has chosen to 
be his wife. This is the vision that rises 
in his soul when he thinks of her. No less 
radiant and lovely should the vision in her 

[136] 



own soul be as she thinks of the woman she 
would be when her marriage day comes. 

The girl who has accepted love and an- 
nounced her engagement should consecrate 
her life anew to Christ and commit herself to 
him in a very special and sacred way. She 
has always needed Christ. She has needed his 
protection. Through the days of her child- 
hood and young girlhood her life has been 
like a sweet flower exposed to danger and 
harm of every kind, in peril of being spoiled 
and crushed, and only the shelter of the 
strength of Christ has kept her. The 
warmth of his love has been the summer of 
her life. The shadow of his might has been 
her defence. All that she is and has become 
she owes to his gentle care through the years 
of her childhood and youth. But she never 
needed Christ before as she needs him now. 
Life is growing more and more serious to 
her. New questions are coming to be 
answered. New responsibilities are arising 
before her. She is preparing for marriage 
and marriage will bring her into new rela- 

[187] 



Ci^e OBeautt of ^elf^Conttol 

tionships where great wisdom will be re- 
quired, where mistakes will be perilous, and 
where only God can do for her what she 
needs. 

Marriage is thought of by most persons 
entering it as something very beautiful and 
very happy. It is thought of as a dream 
of delight, but ofttimes as too much of a 
dream, with not enough reality. Very soon 
the two who have begun their wedded life 
with this dream vision in their minds find 
that after all marriage is something very 
serious. No matter how sweet the happiness, 
how exalted and ethereal the experiences, 
they cannot live in the skies, but must come 
down to common earth — the man to busi- 
ness, tasks, wages, regular hours, unreason- 
able people, complications, competitions, the 
woman to housekeeping, — meals, domestic 
cares and frets, questions of income and ex- 
pense, clothes, neighbors, society, mothers and 
mothers-in-law, and a thousand things which 
may be so tactfully met as to make the daily 
life a beautiful song, or may be so untact- 

[138] 



^^t engagement Bing 

fully experienced as to result in the worst 
kind of discordance. 

Wedded life has in it splendid possibilities 
of happiness — the dream continuing amid 
all the confusing realities of mundane affairs, 
but it has in it also distressing possibilities 
of wrangling, disputing, frets, tears, un- 
happiness, and all manner of bitterness. 
Those who marry need large measures of 
patience, good nature, gentleness, and self- 
control. It requires only a few minutes to 
go through a ceremony and to be pronounced 
married, but it takes a good while to be really 
married, married through and through, so 
that two lives actually blend in one. 

The lesson of self-forgetfulness has to be 
learned, love that wearies not, that is not 
provoked, that thinketh no evil, that suffereth 
long and is kind, that never faileth. Almost 
never do young persons enter the wedded 
life with no further discipline necessary to 
prepare them for living together in complete 
happiness. The time never comes when 
patience, self-restraint, and love in its spirit 

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Ci^e OBeaut^ of ^elf^Control 

of mercy, humility, and endurance are no 
longer required in living together in un- 
broken peace. Happiness in marriage is not 
the result of a ceremony, the putting on of 
a ring, a honeymoon tour, a beautiful home, 
and a circle of delightful friends ; it is a les- 
son which must be learned in joy and in 
sorrow, a lesson which only Christ can teach. 

All this the girl who is planning to marry 
needs to think of in the days before the 
wedding day. She sorely needs Christ in 
those days. He alone can give her the love 
which will make her ready to do her part. 
If she is wise and thoughtful, therefore, she 
will take Christ into her life, into every phase 
of it, and will learn to live so sweetly that 
when she enters the experience of marriage 
there will be no fear that it will fail of 
happiness. 

These are only a few of the suggestions 
that looking at the engagement ring on the 
hand of a happy girl starts in the mind. Of 
course an engagement ring is not the only 
preparation a girl needs to insure a joyous 

[ 140] 



Ci^e engagement King 

wedded life; it is not a charm with mag- 
ical powder; she needs a preparation of 
mind and heart. She needs a self-discipline 
which will bring all the powers of her being 
into harmony and under a self-control which 
will make her safe from all impatience, what- 
ever the experience may be. She needs an 
assimilation of her life and character to 
Christ's so that in her soul the image of 
Christ shall shine. She needs a trust in 
Christ which will lead her to him for strength 
in every time of need or of danger. She 
needs a consecration to Christ which will keep 
her faithful to him In all her life. If she thus 
consciously belongs to Christ she will take 
him into her home as her abiding Guest, and 
where he lives love will live. 



[141] 



** After the darkness, dawning. 
And stir of the rested uring; 
Fresh fragrance from the meadow. 
Fresh hope in everything I 

''After the winter, springtime 

And dreams, that, flowerlike, throng; 
After the tempest, silence; 
After the silence, song, 

''After the heat of anger, 
K Love, that all life enwraps; 
After the stress of battle. 

The trumpet sounding Haps* 

" After regret and doubting, 
A faith without alloy, 
God here and over yonder — 
The end of all things — joy I " 



XI 







HEN the Master first looked 
upon Simon, he saw him as 
he was, and saw him through 
and through. When a 
stranger comes into our 
presence, we see only his outward appearance. 
We cannot look into his heart nor read the 
inner secrets of his life. But the look of 
Jesus that day penetrated to the very depths 
of Simon's being. He read his character. 
He saw all his life, what had been good, and 
what had been evil. " Thou art Simon," he 
said. 

But that was not all. Jesus not only saw 
Simon as he was — he saw also the possibili- 
ties that were in him, all that he might be- 
come, and this was something very great and 
very noble. " Thou art Simon — - thou shalt 
be called Cephas." Now he was only a rough 

[ 145] 



Ci^e OBeaut^ of ^elf*Control 

fisherman, rude, unrefined, uneducated, with- 
out ability, without power or influence, full 
of faults. None of the neighbors of Simon 
saw in him any promise of greatness. They 
never dreamed of him as attaining the great- 
ness and splendor of character that ultimate- 
ly he reached. But that day when Simon 
was introduced to him, Jesus saw all that 
the old fisherman might become in the years 
before him. 

In a gallery in Europe there hang, side by 
side, Rembrandt's first picture, a simple 
sketch, imperfect and faulty, and his great 
masterpiece, which all men admire. So, in the 
two names, Simon and Peter, we have two pic- 
tures, — first, the rude fisherman who came 
to Jesus that day, the man as he was before 
Jesus touched his life and began his work 
on him; and, second, the man as he became 
during the years when the friendship of 
Jesus had warmed his heart and enriched his 
life; when the teaching of Jesus had given 
him wisdom and started holy aspirations in 
his soul ; and when the experiences of struggle 

[ 146] 



and failure, of penitence and forgiveness, of 
sorrow and joy, had wrought their trans- 
formations in him. 

When Jesus said, " Thou shalt be called 
Cephas," he did not mean that this trans- 
formation of Simon would take place Instan- 
taneously. The fisherman did not at once 
become the Rock-man. This was the man 
into whom he would grow along the years 
under Christ's tuition and training. This 
was what his character would be when the 
work of grace in him should be finished. 
The new name was a prophecy of the man 
that was to be, the man Jesus would make 
of him. Now he was only Simon, rash, im- 
pulsive, self-confident, vain, and therefore 
weak and unstable. " Thou shalt be Peter 
— a stone." That very moment the struggle 
began in Peter's soul. He had a glimpse 
of what the Master meant in the new 
name he gave him, and began to strive 
toward it. 

"When the fight begins within himself, 
A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head, 

[U7] 



Ci^e OBeautr of ^elf-Control 

Satan looks up between his feet — both tug — 
He's left, himself, i' the middle: the soul wakes 
And grows. Prolong that battle through his life! 
Never leave growing till the life to come!" 

Think what Jesus was to Peter during the 
years that followed. He was his teacher, his 
friend, his inspiration. If Simon had not 
come to him and entered his school, he would 
never have been anything but a rough, swear- 
ing fisherman, casting his nets for a few years 
into the Sea of Galilee, then dying unhonored 
and being buried in an unmarked grave by 
the sea. His name never would have been 
known in the world. Think what Peter be- 
came, then of what he is to-day, in history, 
in influence upon the countless millions of 
lives that have been blessed through him — 
all this, because Jesus found him and became 
his friend. 

A new human friendship coming into a life 
may color all its future and change its des- 
tiny. Every contact of life leaves a touch 
on the character. Think what helpfulness 
there is in a rich human friendship. It is in- 
teresting to follow the stories of friendships 

[148] 



as we see them in those we know. Ofttimes it 
seems as if the friends had met by chance. 
They were not brought together by any of 
the processes of association. Nobody planned 
to have them meet. They did not choose 
each other and intentionally bring about the 
beginning of the friendship which meant so 
much to both of them in the end. Their lives 
touched — God brought them together — 
and the touch proved a divine coincidence. 
One became a potent influence in the forma- 
tion of the character of the other. When we 
meet another by chance and a friendship be- 
gins, we never know what it will lead to, what 
the influence of the companionship will be. 
It is God who guides such chances and the 
friendship is brought about by him. 

One wrote to another, " Life has been so 
different to me since you became my friend." 
It had been easier, for the person had needed 
guidance, and the hand of the older friend had 
given steadiness to the life of the younger 
one. The friendship had brought new inspi- 
ration, for the guidance was safe and wise 

[ 149] 



Ci^e OBeaut^ of ^elf* Control 

from long experience. The friendship in this 
case has also brought companionship. Many 
of us have friendships which came into our 
lives and have been benedictions, inspira- 
tions, a comfort, a strength, through all 
the years that have followed. 

We may think of what the friendship of 
Jesus was to Simon. It set before him a 
vision of purity, of beauty, of heavenliness, 
of strength, which gave him new thoughts of 
life. Nobody he had ever known had had 
such a life as he saw in Jesus. He had never 
seen such gentleness before, such gracious- 
ness, such patience, such kindness. It was 
not the supernatural Jesus, the miraculous 
in power, that impressed Simon — it was the 
genuineness of his humanity, the simple good- 
ness, the richness of his nature, that first so 
influenced him. He never had heard such 
words in his home or among the best people 
he had known as the words he now heard 
Jesus speak. A young girl, away at school, 
had a letter from her pastor, and wrote of it, 
" I never received such a letter as that be- 

[150] 



m^at €W^t'^ ^timn^W pitam 

fore." It was entirely different from the 
letters the young people had written to her, 
yet it was not a solemn letter, it was not filled 
with pious platitudes, giving advice, and 
warning her against danger. She had ex- 
pected that her pastor's first letter to her 
would be a serious one, and she almost 
dreaded receiving it. But instead, every 
word of it was bright and human, full of 
cheer, not trivial, but full of inspiration. 
She never had read such a letter. Yet that 
letter set her feet in new paths. She was a 
better girl ever after receiving it. Life meant 
more to her from that day. In some such 
way the friendship of Jesus affected Simon. 
Jesus was not a bit like the rabbis, the priests, 
and the rulers to whom the fisherman had 
been accustomed. He had never heard that 
kind of religious conversation, nor found that 
sort of friend until now. 

There are some friendships which really 
make all things new for those into whose 
lives they come. Life has a new meaning 
after that. It looks up and sees the blue 

[151] 



Cl^e peaut^ of ^eU^Control 

skies and the stars, where before it saw only 
dust and barren fields. There is something 
else to seek for now besides the day's bread 
and poor houses to live in. There is some- 
thing in our friend that makes it easier for 
us to work, that makes our burdens seem 
lighter. The griefs that were so hard for us 
to endure mean now to us far less of loneli- 
ness and bitterness since we have these new 
friendships. 

These are hints only of what the personal 
friendship of Jesus meant to Simon. Think 
what an uplift there was in the new name the 
Master gave him. He was going to be a 
Rock. He certainly was not that now, but 
just as certainly he would be. " Thou shalt 
be Peter." In just this same way Jesus comes 
to us with a new name. We shall not always 
be poor fishermen — some day we shall be 
catching men, some day we shall be great 
apostles. The life before us is glorious. 
Jesus sees us first as we are, with all our im- 
perfections, our blemishes, and faults. But 
he sees also the possibilities that are in us. 

[152] 



We do not consider enough what we are to be 
when the new hfe in us grows into all its 
splendor of character. We ought to think 
of the splendor into which we shall come 
through Christ's grace. We are not worms ; 
we are immortal beings. We are children of 
God. We are heirs of heaven. Now we are 
imperfect and very faulty, but we are going 
to grow out of all that and become glorious 
creatures. It is when we realize this and the 
glorious vision bursts upon us, that we begin 
to live truly. 

The Master sets before us the goal of our 
being. He has a beautiful plan for each life. 
There is something definite for which he has 
made us, into which he would fashion us, 
and toward which all his guidance, educa- 
tion, and training will tend. This .is not 
a world of chance — it is our Father's 
world. All the experiences of our lives have 
their part in making us what Christ would 
have us become, in bringing out the possi- 
bilities that he sees in us when we first 
come to him. 

[153] 



Ci^e I3eautt of ^elf*Contt^ol 

All life is a school. Our school-books are 
not all in English print. Our lessons are set 
for us in many kinds of type, in different lan- 
guages. The Bible is our great text-book, 
and we are to use it daily and always. The 
lessons are not written out plainly for us on 
its pages. But life is our practice school. 
There we are to learn patience, joy, content- 
ment, peace, gentleness. All the experiences 
of the passing days have their lessons in 
them. Sometimes we are alarmed by the dis- 
appointments, the sufferings, the sorrows we 
have to endure. But there really is no rea- 
son for alarm or dismay, however full of pain 
or seeming loss the days may be. God is in 
his world, and whatever the experiences may 
be, nothing Is going wrong. The disappoint- 
ments which seem to be working confusion in 
our hopes and plans are God's appointments, 
yielding better things In the end than if our 
ways had been realized. The sufferings and 
the sorrows of our lives have their part In the 
working out of the Master's vision for us. 
Peter owed a great deal to the hard things 

[ 154] 



in his education. He paid a large price for 
his lessons, but not too large. 

"A man lived fifty years — joy dashed with tears; 

Loved, toiled; had wife and child, and lost them; died; 
And left of all his long life's work one little song. 
That lasted — naught beside.*' 

It is worth while to endure all the sorrow, 
loss, and pain, just to learn to sing the one 
sweet song. No price in tears would have 
been too great to pay to be the author, for 
example, of the twenty-third psalm, or " Rock 
of Ages, cleft for me." Think of the things 
Peter left — was the price he paid too great .'^ 
Let no one dread any suffering he may be 
called to endure, if thereby he becomes able 
to be a blessing to other lives, or leaves behind 
anything that will make blessings which shall 
enrich the earth, fruits which shall feed men's 
hunger. 

The sculptor, hewing at his marble and see- 
ing the chips of the stone flying about, said 
in explanation, " While the marble wastes, 
the image grows." The stone unhewn can- 
not grow into living beauty. The life that 

[ 155 ] 



Ci^e OBeautt of telecontrol 

suffers not, that endures no pain, cannot be 
fashioned into the likeness of Christ. Simon 
can become Peter only through chisel work. 
The marble must waste that the image may 
grow. " The highest beauty is beauty of 
character, and the chiseling of pain com- 
pletes it." 



[156] 



I^eople a^ jEean^ of d^race 



7^ life worth living? To have known one friend 

Whose loyalty is certain as the sun; 
Or to have known a single pure love thrill — 

Such thrills as come when two souls join in one — 
Which of all these is not enough to make 

Man say, '/'m glad I lived/ when life is done?** 

" The loneliness from grief has gone away 

Since now its coming brings thee to my side; 
And pain its sternest secrets seems to hide. 
And doubt to vanish, if thou wilt but stay" 



XII 



l^eople ajs pitam of <Bvact 




E speak of certain religious 
exercises as means of grace. 
Prayer is one of these. 
When we pray we stand in 
the very presence of God. 
We do not see any form, but faith makes us 
conscious of the shining of his face, and we 
cannot but be affected. We read of Moses 
that when he had been long in the mountain 
with God and then came back to the people, 
the skin of his face shone. In one of the 
Psalms it is said that God's people looked 
unto him and were radiant. Being with God 
makes us like God. The Bible also is a means 
of grace. As we read its words and think 
upon them, their revealings, their counsels, 
and commands, their promises and comforts 
bring the life of God himself into contact 
with our lives, and we are helped, quickened, 
strengthened, made better. Whatever in our 

[159] 



Cl^e OBeautf of telecontrol 

experiences brings us under the influence of 
God and leads us into holier life is a means 
of grace to us. This is the meaning of Chris- 
tian worship. More than we realize, people 
also are means of grace to us. We get our 
best lessons from men, we are most deeply 
influenced by our contacts with them. " Evil 
companionships corrupt good morals." We 
know how being with good people in intimate 
relations makes us better. 

One said of a godly minister, " You have 
only to shake that man's hand to feel that 
he is full of the Holy Spirit." Another said 
of a saintly man, " I never see that man cross 
the common, sir, without being the better for 
it." Many of us know a few people at least 
who have a strange influence over us for good. 
To be with them for an hour or even for a 
few minutes lifts us up into a new atmosphere 
and makes us want to live a better life. 

One of the finest tests of character is the 
effect a life has on other lives. There are cer- 
tain people who make you desire to be gentle, 
kindly, thoughtful, and there are others who 

[160] 



I^eople a0 jKeanjs of (Btact 

stir up evil desires in you, who make you 
bitter, resentful, who provoke you to anger 
and all unholiness. The Christian should seek 
to be so full of spiritual influence, that all 
his words, his life, his conduct, shall be 
Christlike. There could be no fitter prayer 
breathed daily from our hearts and lips than 
this : 

"May every soul that touches mine — 
Be it the slightest contact — get therefrom some good. 
Some httle grace, one kindly thought, 
One inspiration yet unf elt, one bit of courage 
For the darkening sky, one gleam of faith 
To brave the thickening ills of life. 
One glimpse of brighter skies beyond the gathering mists 
To make this life worth while 
And heaven a sm-er heritage!" 

St. Paul wrote of certain friends whom he 
hoped to visit, " I long to see you, that I 
may impart unto you some spiritual gift." 
Could there be a more fitting wish than this 
in the heart of one friend for another .^^ If 
this were always our desire when we are 
about to visit another, what blessings would 
we carry in our friendships wherever we go! 
We are not aware in how large a measure 

[161] 



W^t OBeautv of telecontrol 

God sends spiritual gifts to men through 
other men. When he would help one of his 
children in some way he does not send an 
angel — he sends a friend. 

"He hides himself within the love 

Of those that we love best; 
The smiles and tones that make our homes 

Are shrines by him possessed. 
He tents within the lowly heart 

And shepherds every thought; 
We find him not by seeking long. 

We lose him not unsought." 

One reason for the incarnation was that 
only thus could God get near to us, near 
enough to give us the blessing we need. If 
he had come in Sinai's splendors, the glory 
would have so dazzled our eyes that we could 
not have endured to look upon him. So he 
came instead in a sweet, gentle, beautiful 
human life. What was true of this largest of 
all divine manifestations is true in lesser ways 
of all heavenly revealings. God does not 
open a window in heaven that we may look in 
and see his face; he shows us a glimpse of 
heaven in some sweet home. Christ does not 
come down and walk again in person upon 

[ 162 ] 



^topU ajs jEeanjs of matt 

our streets that we may see him as the dis- 
ciples saw him. He makes himself known to 
us in and through the lives of his friends. 
Even as in a dewdrop, quivering on leaf or 
grass blade, on a summer's morning, one can 
see the whole expanse of the blue sky mir- 
rored, so in the lowliest life of a true believer 
there is a mirroring, though dim and imper- 
fect, of the brightness of God's glory. 

Thus God reveals his love to a child 
through the love of the mother. Thus the 
mother is the first means of grace to her 
child. She is the earliest interpreter to it of 
God's love and tenderness, of his thoughtful- 
ness and care, of his holiness and purity. In 
wonderful ways also are children means of 
grace to their parents. A prayerful father 
and mother learn more of the love of God and 
of God's fatherhood as they bend over their 
first-bom child or hold it in their arms than 
ever they learned before from teachers and 
from books — even from the Bible. 

In other ways, too, is a child a means of 
grace to its parents. Jesus set a little child 

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m^t OBeautt of ^elf*Contt:ol 

in the midst of his disciples and bade them 
learn from it lessons of humility and simplic- 
ity. Every child that grows up in a true 
home is a constant teacher, and its opening 
life, like a rosebud in its unfolding, pours 
beauty and sweetness all about. Many a 
home has been transformed by the uncon- 
scious ministry of a little child. 

Children are means of grace to parents, 
also, in the very care and anxiety which they 
cause. They bring trouble as well as com- 
fort. We have to work the harder to make 
provision for them. We have to deny our- 
selves when they come, and begin to live for 
them. They cost us anxieties, too, — sleep- 
less nights, ofttimes, when they are sick, 
days of weariness when a thousand things 
have to be done for them. Then we have to 
plan for them, think of their education and 
training, and teach them to look after the 
formation of their habits. In many cases, 
too, they cause distress by their wayward- 
ness. In many homes the sorrow over living 
children is greater far than was the grief for 

[ 164] 



I^eople ajs pitam of (0race 

the death of those who have passed from our 
presence. 

"Not for the dead, Lord, we weep: 
Untroubled is their rest, and deep; 
For them why should we mourn or sigh? 
*Neath quiet graves in peace they lie: 
*Thou givest thy beloved sleep.' 

"For tempted souls, for wand'ring sheep. 
For those whose path is rough and steep, — 
For these we lift our voices high. 
Not for the dead." 

Yet it is in these very experiences that our 
children become specially means of grace to 
us. We learn lessons of patience in our care 
for them. We are trained to unselfishness 
as, under the pressure of love, we are all the 
while denying ourselves and making personal 
sacrifices for them. We are trained to 
gentler, softer moods as we witness their suf- 
ferings and as our hearts are pained by our 
anxieties on their behalf. Our distress as we 
look upon them in their struggles and tempta- 
tions and are grieved by their heedlessness 
and waywardness works its discipline in our 
lives, teaching us compassion and faith as we 
cry to God for them. There are really no 

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Ci^e OBeaut^ of telecontrol 

such growing-times in the lives of true Chris- 
tian parents as when they are bringing up 
their children, if they learn their lessons. 

Every life, old or young, that touches 
ours is meant to be a means of grace to us. 
The poet said, " I am a part of all that I 
have met." He meant that every other life 
which had touched him had left something 
of itself in him. Every bit of conversation 
we have with another gives us something we 
shall always keep. We learn many of our 
best lessons from our casual associations 
with our fellows. Every line of moral beauty 
in a regenerated life is a mirroring of a 
fragment, at least, of the image of God, on 
which our eyes may look, absorbing its loveli- 
ness. Every Christian life is in an imper- 
fect measure, yet, truly, a new incarnation. 
Everyone may say, " Christ liveth in me.'* 
We live every day in close and intimate 
relations with people who bear something of 
God's likeness. The good and the holy, 
therefore, are means of grace to us because 
they help to interpret to us the divine beauty. 

[166] 



people ajs pitam of d^tace 

In sympathetic companionship with them 
we are made conversant with holiness in 
practical life. God comes down out of the 
inaccessible light and reveals himself in the 
human experiences of those with whom we 
are walking or working. 

"Meanwhile, with every son and saint of Thine 
Along the glorious line. 
Sitting in turns beside thy sacred feet. 

We '11 hold communion sweet — 
Know them by look and voice, and thank them all 

For helping us in thrall. 
For words of hope and bright examples given 
To show through moonless skies that there is hght in 
heaven." 

If living in direct companionship with God 
seems too high an experience to be possible 
for us, it is possible for us to live with those 
who do have close fellowship with him. Con- 
verse with those who live near to Christ can- 
not but enrich our knowledge of divine things 
and elevate the tone of our lives. 

Even the faults of those with whom we 
come in contact may be means of grace to us. 
It is harder to live with disagreeable people 
than with those who are congenial and sweet, 

[167] 



C]^e 'Beautt of ^elf* Control 

but the very hardness becomes a splendid 
discipline to us and helps to develop in us the 
grace of patience. Having to live or work 
with irritable, quick-tempered people may 
train us to self-control in speech, teaching us 
either to be silent under provocation, or else 
to give the soft answer that turneth away 
wrath. Socrates said he married Xantippe 
and endured her temper, for the self-dis- 
cipline he found in the experience. It would 
not be well to advise any man to marry such 
a woman for the purpose of the discipline he 
would get; yet if by accident a man finds 
himself unhappily yoked to a Xantippe, and 
wants to turn his misfortune to good, this 
is the way he may do it. In any case the 
disagreeable people, the unreasonable people, 
the unllkable people with whom we find our- 
selves associated in the contacts of business 
or society may thus in Indirect ways do a 
great deal toward making us better. 

Enemies also may prove means of grace. 
For one thing, they give us a chance to prac- 
tice one of the hardest lessons the Master 

[168] 



ptoplt ajs jHeanjS of (Btact 

gives us to learn — to love our enemies. 
When those who dislike us say unkind or 
bitter things about us, if we find that what 
they say is in any measure true, we should 
mend our ways. If what they say is false, 
we should be comforted by the beatitude for 
those whom men reproach and persecute and 
against whom they say all manner of evil 
falsely, for the Master's sake. 

Thus on all sides we find that we may get 
good from those about us. From the holy 
and saintly we may get inspirations toward 
better things and be lifted up perceptibly 
toward goodness and saintliness. From the 
gentle and the loving we receive softening 
influence which melts our cold winter into 
the genial glow of summer. From the rude 
and the quarrelsome we get self -discipline in 
our continued effort to live peaceably with 
such persons, despite their disagreeableness 
and their disposition to contention. Friction 
polishes not metals only, but characters also. 
Iron sharpeneth iron; life sharpeneth life. 
People are means of grace to us. 

[169] 



Cl^e OBeautr of telecontrol 

We may grow, therefore, as Christians, in 
our own place among people. Solitariness 
is not good. In the broader as well as in the 
narrower sense it is not good for man to be 
alone. Every life needs solitude at times ; we 
should get into each of our busy days times 
of silence when human presences shall be shut 
away, and we shall be alone with God. We 
need such hours for quiet thought, for com- 
munion with Christ, for spiritual feeding, for 
the drawing of blessing and holy influences 
down from heaven to replenish the waste pro- 
duced by life's toil, struggle, and sorrow. 
There is a time for being alone. But we 
should not seek to live always nor usually in 
this way. Life in solitude grows selfish. 
The weeds of evil desire and unhealthy 
emotion flourish in solitariness. 

We need to live among people that by 
the contacts the best things in us may be 
drawn out in thought and care and service 
for others. It is by no means a good thing 
for us to live in such conditions that we 
are not required to think of others, to make 

[170] 



I^eople a0 jEeanss of <5tacz 

self-denials for others, to live for others, not 
for ourselves. The greater and more con- 
stant the pressure in life toward unselfish- 
ness, toward looking out and not in, and lend- 
ing a hand, the better for the true growth 
and development of our lives. We never be- 
come unselfish save under conditions that 
compel us to live unselfishly. If we live — 
as we may live — with heart and life open 
to every good influence, we get some blessing, 
some inspiration, some touch of beauty, some 
new drawing out of latent life, some fresh 
uplift, from every person we meet, even 
casually. There is no life with which we 
come in contact which may not bring us some 
message from God or by its very faults and 
infirmities help to discipline us into stronger, 
calmer, deeper, truer life, and thus become 
to us a means of grace. 



[171] 



^l^at €i^xm i^ to ilte 



No jridured likeness of my Lord have I; 
He carved no record of His ministry 

On wood or stone. 
He left no sculptured tomb nor parchment dim. 
But trusted for all memory of Him 

Mens hearts alone. 

Who sees the face but sees in part; who reads 
The spirit which it hides sees all; he needs 

No more. Thy grace — ' 

Thy life in my life. Lord, give Thou to me; 
And then, in truth, I may forever see 

My Master's face." 



XIII 



mw €W^t ijs to itte 




HE title of the chapter is im- 
portant. It is not, " What 
Christ Is," but "What Christ 
Is to Me." He may be, in 
our thought, a most glorious 
person, with all the honor claimed for him in 
the New Testament, and yet be nothing at 
all to me personally. He may be a great 
Saviour, and not be my Saviour. He may 
be a wonderful Friend, and yet his friendship 
mean nothing whatever to me. The twenty- 
third psalm is an exquisite little poem. It 
is dear to the hearts of millions of believers. 
But it would not be the same if it began, 
" The Lord is a Shepherd." It is the word 
" my " that gives it its dearliess. So it would 
not be the same if the title of this chapter 
were, " What Christ Is." It might depict his 
character in glorious words. He is the Son 
of God, deity shining in every line. He is 

[175] 



Cl^e OBeautt of ^elfControl 

the King of kings, worthy of the worship and 
adoration of the highest beings in the world. 
He has all divine excellences. It was no rob- 
bery of God for Jesus Christ to claim to be 
equal with God. But we may believe all that 
the creeds of Christendom assert regarding 
him, and yet receive no blessing from him. 

The question, what Christ is to us, starts 
in our hearts infinite thoughts of love, of 
mercy, of comfort. How can we ever tell 
what he has been to us.? We may think of 
what he has done for us as our Saviour. 
This opens a vista back to the heart of God 
and into eternity. We cannot understand 
what the Bible tells us of the kingdom pre- 
pared for us from the foundation of the 
world, of our names having been written in 
the Lamb's book of life from the foundation 
of the world. Whatever these and other such 
words mean they certainly suggest that we 
have been in the heart of God from the eternal 
past. There is something bewildering in 
this revealing that Christ thought about us 
before we were made. 

[176] 



m)^at €W^t i^ to jEe 

Then what was Christ to us when we were 
born? We speak of the newborn baby as 
" the little stranger." He never has been 
in this world before. But he does not come 
as a stranger. Love meets him at the door 
and welcomes him. Christ meets him, too, 
with love and yearning. He bends over the 
cradle of every baby and claims it for his 
own. In one of the wonderful passages in 
the Gospel about children, Jesus said that re- 
ceiving a little child when it comes was the 
same as receiving him. There is nothing 
more beautiful in all the story of Christ than 
his love for children. 

We may think also of what Christ is to 
us in personal ways. For one thing, he is 
our Friend, and he calls us his friends. The 
need of friendship is the deepest need of life. 
Every heart cries out for it. Christ spoke 
no other word to his disciples which meant 
more to them than when he said, " I will be 
your friend." A young man, a teacher in 
a mission school in the South, said these 
words to a boy who had been brought up 

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Cl^e 13eautt of ^elf^Control 

in the darkest ignorance, who had never 
heard a kind word before, and who had never 
had a friend. The words fell upon the boy's 
ear like something spoken from heaven. 
Some days afterward the boy lingered about 
till the teacher was alone, and said to him, 
" Did you mean what you said the other 
day — that you would be my friend? " The 
teacher assured him that he did. " If you 
will be my friend," the boy said, " I can be- 
come a man." It was the beginning of a 
new life to the boy. 

Hundreds of people in barren conditions 
never hear such a word from any lips and 
are starved to death for want of love. 
Human friends have brought life, joy, hope, 
and marvelous uplifting to countless lives 
just by saying, " I will be your friend." 
Nothing you can do for the world could 
mean half so much to men as just going 
among them and in reality becoming their 
friend. There are great men, with noble 
gifts and splendid qualities, who have learned 
the secret of loving others, who are doing 

[178] 



mi^at €^mt 10 to Pit 

marvelous good among their fellows, not by 
giving them anything, nor by doing any- 
thing for them, but just by being a friend 
to them. 

There never was any other man who 
wrought such a ministry of friendship as 
Christ has wrought through the centuries. 
He is always coming to men and saying, " I 
am your friend." That was the way he saved 
Simon, making of him the great apostle whose 
name is known through the world. That was 
the way he took the youth John, becoming 
his friend, putting a glorious ideal into his 
heart, and making him ultimately the apostle 
of love. It is this blessed friendship that, 
all the Christian centuries, has been touching 
lives everywhere with its own spirit of un- 
selfishness and service. There are many 
pictures of Jesus in the Gospels, but perhaps 
there is no one more suggestive of his real 
character than the one which shows him girt 
with a towel, holding the basin and washing 
his disciples' feet. There is nothing Jesus 
would not do, no sacrifice he would not make, 

[ 179 ] 



Ci^e "Beautt of telecontrol 

no humbling of himself to which he would 
not stoop, in doing the part of a friend. 

Dr. Watson (Ian Maclaren) tells of once 
hearing a plain sermon in a little country 
church. It was a layman, a farmer, who 
preached, but Dr. Watson says he never 
heard so impressive an ending to any sermon 
as he heard that day. After a fervent 
presentation of the gospel, the preacher said 
with great earnestness : " My friends, why 
is it that I go on, preaching to you, week 
by week? It is just this, — because I can't 
eat my bread alone." That is the Master's 
own burden — his heart is breaking to have 
men share with him the blessings of life. 
He cannot bear to be alone in his joy. There 
is no surer test of love for Christ than the 
longing to have others love him. 

When we accept Christ's friendship and 
let his love into our hearts, infinite possibili- 
ties of blessing are ours. Christ becomes our 
teacher, our guide, our burden-bearer, our 
very life. We are transformed through his 
influence. Loving him makes our dull lives 

[180] 



mm €)^vm ijs to Pit 

radiant. A missionary teacher of Tokyo tells 
of a Japanese woman who came to speak 
about having her daughter received into the 
school for girls which the teacher was con- 
ducting. She asked if only beautiful girls 
were admitted. " No," was the reply ; " we 
take any girl who desires to come." " But," 
continued the woman, " all your girls that 
I have seen are very beautiful." The teacher 
replied, " We tell them of Christ, and seek 
to have them take him into their hearts, 
and this makes their faces lovely." The 
woman answered, " Well, I do not want my 
daughter to become a Christian, but I am 
going to send her to your school to get that 
look in her face." 

Christ is the sweetener and beautifier of the 
lives and the very faces of those who be- 
come his friends. He gives them peace, and 
peace brightens and transforms their features. 
He teaches them love, and love makes them 
beautiful. A girl who was very homely, so 
homely that even her mother told her she 
never would have any friends, determined to 

[131] 



Ci^e "Beaittt of ^elf^Control 

make her life so winning by its graciousness 
and its ministry of kindness that her homeli- 
ness would be forgotten. She gave herself 
to Christ in a simple and complete devotion 
and sought to be wholly under his influence. 
She then devoted herself to the helping and 
serving of others, until she was known every- 
where as the angel of the town where she 
lived. Her ugliness of features was for- 
gotten in the beauty of her disposition and 
life. That is what having Christ for a friend 
does for those who yield themselves to his 
transforming influence. 

In no other experience in life is the bless- 
ing of the friendship of Christ more wonder- 
ful than in the times of affliction and trouble. 
" It is worth our thought," says Bishop 
Huntington, " how small the audience would 
be that would assemble weekly, life through, 
to listen to a gospel that had nothing to say 
to sufferers. Poor, weak, broken hearts, 
staggering under their loads, would refuse a 
Comforter who had never wept himself, nor 
remembered that his followers must weep. A 

[182] 



mi^at €W^t i^ to jHe 

religion that addressed itself only to those 

who are in a state of comfort would be Hke 

* 

a system of navigation calculated only for 
clear weather, and giving no aid when night 
and cloud have wiped out all waymarks from 
earth and sky, and the tempest shrieks in 
the darkness over an unknown sea." 

The Bible is a great book of comfort. 
The heart of Christ was wonderfully sensi- 
tive to suffering. He was called a man of 
sorrows, and it is said that he was acquainted 
with grief, that is, with all phases of grief. 
We may know a little of pain, one phase of 
suffering, but Christ knew the whole field 
of grief. Yet the griefs of the world did 
not make him bitter. One of the dangers 
with us is that we shall receive hurt from 
life's trials, shall be hardened by them. 
Christ received no harm from anything that 
he suffered. He came through all painful 
experiences with the gentleness of his heart 
still gentler. He never complained of God, 
charging him with unkindness or saying he 
did not care when his children suffered. 

[183] 



Ci^e I5eaut^ of ^elf-Coittrol 

We never can know in the present world 
what we owe to the hard things in our hves, 
what pain and suffering do for us. Christ 
makes these experiences a school of blessing 
and good for us. He changes our crown 
of thorns into a garland of roses. We have 
to meet hard things in our experiences, but 
it is never God's will that we shall be hurt 
by them ; he wants us always to be helped 
by them, made better, our lives enriched. 
In Barriers " Margaret Ogilvy," is a chapter 
with the suggestive title, " How my mother 
got her soft face." She got it through suf- 
fering. Her boy was hurt. News had come 
that he was near death, far away from home, 
and the mother set out to go to him, hoping 
to reach him in time to minister to him and 
comfort him. Her ticket was bought, she 
had bidden the other children good-bye at the 
station. Then the father came out of the 
little telegraph office and said huskily, " He 's 
gone," and they all went home again up the 
little brae. The mother never recovered from 
the shock. She was another woman ever 

[184] 



m'i^at Ci^rijst tjs to Pit 

after, however, a better woman, gentler. 
Barrie says, " That is how my mother got 
her soft face and her pathetic ways and her 
large charity, and why other mothers run 
to her when they have lost a child." There 
are many other mothers who have got soft 
faces in the same way. They have had 
troubles very hard to bear, but their Hves 
have been made more beautiful by the hard- 
ness. That is part of what Christ is to us 
— he leads us through pain and loss, but 
our faces grow softer. 

What is Christ to us in the development of 
our lives ? A woman spent the summer in the 
mountains and brought home with her in the 
autumn some pieces of lovely moss. She put 
it in her conservatory, and in the warmth of 
the place a multitude of beautiful little flowers 
came up among the moss. There are in us 
possibilities which, in common experiences, 
are not brought out, but when the warmth 
and light of the love of God pour about them 
they are wooed forth. The poet when asked 
what Christ was to him, pointed to a rose- 

[185] 



Cl^e "Beawtt of ^elf^Conttol 

bush near by, full of glorious roses. " What 
the sun is to this rosebush," he said, " Christ 
is to me." Whatever is lovely in our lives 
has been brought out by the warmth of 
Christ's love touching us and calling out the 
loveliness. We do not realize all that Christ 
may be to us, what undeveloped beauty there 
Is in our natures that he will bring out if we 
yield ourselves to him. 

What is Christ to us in our hope for the 
future.^ The veil that hides the other world 
is not lifted here, but we have visions of some- 
thing very wonderful waiting for us. " It 
is not yet made manifest what we shall be. 
We know that, if he shall be manifested, we 
shall be like him; for we shall see him even 
as he is." That is enough for us to want to 
know. A Christian woman was speaking of a 
saintly man who was for many years the su- 
perintendent of a large city Sunday school. 
He was a man of most gentle spirit. He 
loved the children with a love that made them 
most dear to him. When he lay in his coffin, 
the members of his Sunday school passed by 

[186] 



m^at €t)ti^t fis to jtte 

to look at his face in their last farewell, and 
every child laid a flower on his breast, until 
he was literally buried beneath the sweet blos- 
soms. Speaking of his death, the woman said, 
'' He must have passed right into the bosom 
of Jesus, he was so true, so holy, so Christ- 
like." That is what death means to one who 
has followed Christ faithfully. When the 
news went out that Phillips Brooks was dead, 
the mother in one home where he was most 
dear, told her little daughter that her good 
friend was gone. She had dreaded to break 
the news to her lest her grief might be over- 
powering, but the child only exclaimed, " O 
mother, how glad the angels must be to have 
him in heaven ! " 

It is sweet to think that when we go away 
from the dear love of earth we shall be with 
Christ, lying on his bosom, welcomed by 
angels and by waiting saints. Christ is every- 
thing beautiful to us here; there he will be 
infinitely more to us. 



[187] 



flDur Onan)St»et;eli ptavtx^ 



" Teach me to feel that Thou art always nigh ; 
Teach me the struggles of the soul to hear. 
To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh; 

Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer. 



XIV 




N one of our hymns there is 
a line which runs, " Teach 
me the patience of unan- 
swered prayer.'' The writer's 
thought is, patience in wait- 
ing when our prayer seems not to be an- 
swered. The answer may be only delayed. 
Sometimes it takes a long time for God to 
give us the answer we seek. We can think 
of several possible reasons. 

Perhaps the thing we seek cannot be pre- 
pared for us at once. God does not work un- 
necessary miracles. The economy of super- 
natural acts is to be noted in our Lord's life. 
He had all power and could do anything. 
Nature's limitations set no trammels for him. 
He could have changed water into wine when- 
ever he wished to do so, but he did it only 
once. He could have made bread from stones, 
but he never did. He wrought a number of 

[191] 



Ci^e I3eautt of telecontrol 

miracles, but he did thousands of deeds of 
common kindness when there was no necessity 
for supernatural acts. Some of the prayers 
we make could be answered at once only by 
miracle. It is not the will of God to give us 
the answer in that way, and so he requires us 
to wait while he prepares it for us in a natu- 
ral way. 

If you want an oak tree to grow on your 
lawn and pray for it, Grod will not cause it 
to spring up overnight. He will bid you drop 
an acorn in the place where you want to have 
the tree, and it will grow as trees always grow 
and your prayer will be answered, but not 
fully for a long time. You will need the pa- 
tience of unanswered prayer. A young man 
has a desire to do great things. He has high 
ideals and is ambitious to achieve noble 
things. God may be willing to give him what 
he wishes, but not instantaneously. The 
young man needs to have his mental faculties 
developed and trained in order that he may be 
able to accomplish the great things he de- 
sires to do. Away on, in the years of matur- 

[ 192 ] 



ity, he may achieve the thing he prayed in 
youth to be able to do. But now the prayer 
offered so importunately seems not to be an- 
swered. Really, however, it is answered as 
soon as God could answer it. We need the 
patience of unanswered prayer while we do 
not seem to be receiving at all the thing we 
long for and ask for. 

You pray to have the Christian graces in 
your life. You want to have joy, patience, 
gentleness, humility, mercifulness. But these 
heavenly qualities cannot be put into your 
life at once; they have to grow from small 
beginnings to perfection, — " first the blade, 
then the ear, then the full grain in the ear," 
— and that requires a long time. It needs 
" the patience of unanswered prayer " in 
your heart that you may not be discouraged 
while you wait. 

Another reason for slowness in the answer- 
ing of prayer may be in ourselves. We are 
not yet ready to receive the thing we seek. 
There must be a work done in us, a work of 
preparation before the thing we seek can be 

[193] 



C]^e "Beautt of ^elf*Control 

given to us. A young man has a strong de- 
sire to go into a certain calling or business 
and prays earnestly and persistently that the 
way may be opened for him. But he has not 
now the qualification to make him successful 
in that business. Only by a long experience 
can he be made ready for it. His prayer may 
seem long to be unanswered, but it needs 
only patience and continuance in work and 
prayer combined. Prayer without work 
would never be answered. Many prayers wait 
for answer for something that must be done 
first in us. 

Our prayers for spiritual blessings cannot 
be answered until a great work has been 
wrought in us. You want to be holy. You 
are weary of sinning and grieving God. 
Months pass and somehow your prayer seems 
to have no answer. The trouble is, it can be 
answered only in your own heart. The evil 
there must be driven out. You pray to be 
made gentle. God loves to answer such a 
prayer, but the answer can come only through 
a long, slow discipline in which your old na- 

[194] 



ture must be softened. You must have pa- 
tience, for this great lesson is long and can- 
not be learned in a day. It never can come 
into any life as an immediate answer to 
prayer. It takes some people a whole life- 
time to learn always to be kind, always to be 
gentle. But it is worth while to give even the 
longest lifetime to the learning of such a 
lesson. 

But why should we pray at all when we 
must win the answer by our own striving? 
Only with divine help can such prayers ever 
be answered. We cannot alone make our- 
selves gentle, or kind, or humble. These are 
among the things we cannot do apart from 
Christ. There is a legend of an ancient 
church in England which tells that centuries 
ago while a new building was being erected 
there came among the workmen a stranger 
and began to help them. This man always 
took, unasked, the hardest tasks. When a 
beam had been lifted to its place and was 
found too short, the men tried in every way 
to remedy the defect, but in vain. Night 

[195] 



Ci^e I5eaut^ of telecontrol 

closed in, leaving them in great perplexity, 
but in the morning the beam was in its place, 
lengthened to the exact dimensions required. 
The stranger workman was gone, but now 
the men understood that it was the Master 
himself who had been working with them un- 
recognized, supplying their lack of wisdom 
and strength. The legend has its teaching 
for us. We are not toiling unhelped at our 
work. We are not seeking the blessings of 
grace unaided. While we pray for new gifts 
and strive to attain them, Christ is with us, 
unseen, and our prayers shall not be unan- 
swered nor our longings be unattained. 

Another reason that prayers seem to re- 
main unanswered may be that the answers we 
desire and expect would not be the wisest and 
best. Those who were praying and waiting 
for the Messiah before Jesus came never 
received the answer they were looking for. 
They expected a Messiah who should be an 
earthly conqueror. Their prayers were un- 
answered, though the Messiah came. Many 
people pray for certain things which they 

[196] 



think would be great blessings to them if they 
should receive them. God is willing to grant 
them the best gifts of his love. He does not 
reject their prayers. But the things they 
plead for would not be the good they seek. 
If they were granted to them, they would be 
only empty husks, not the corn their hunger 
craves. Not receiving what they so eagerly 
longed for and have pleaded for so earnestly, 
they suppose they have prayed in vain, that 
God has not listened to their requests. Mean- 
while, the real good which their hearts needed 
has been coming to them continually, coming 
in what they regarded as unanswered prayers. 
Christian life is full of just such experi- 
ences as these. We do not know what really 
are the things we need most. Our vision is 
limited. We are swayed by the physical. 
We think a certain thing, if we had it, would 
make us almost perfectly happy, and that if 
it is not given to us, no matter what other 
good things we may receive, we cannot be 
happy. So we pray with great earnestness 
and importunity that God will grant to us 

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Cl^e "Beautt of telecontrol 

this thing that seems so essential to us. Yet 
we do not surely know that the thing, so de- 
sired, will prove to us the blessing we think 
it will be. Many persons have felt the same 
concerning desires they had, and have re- 
ceived them only to be bitterly disappointed. 
They found only ashes where they expected 
to find delicious fruit. Or they shrank from 
a great sorrow which they saw coming toward 
them, and prayed that its coming might be 
averted. The prayer was not granted. The 
sorrow came with its apparent desolation. 
But out of it came in the end the greatest 
good for which they will praise God in 
eternity. 

No doubt we shall some time thank God 
that many ardent prayers of ours were not 
granted. One man earnestly longed to enter 
a certain business and prayed that he might 
be allowed to do so. But his desire was not 
granted. Later he was led into another line 
of life in which he found an opportunity for 
large prosperity and for great usefulness. 

In a beautiful home a little child lay very 
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flDur ananjstDereD ^tavtt^ 

sick. The young parents had once been 
active Christians, but in their first wedded 
happiness they had given up Christ, and had 
now no place in their home for God. Their 
happiness seemed complete when the baby 
came. Radiant were the days that followed. 
Their joy knew no bounds. Then the baby 
fell very sick. In their alarm the parents 
sought the offices of religion and earnest and 
continued prayers were offered by the little 
one's bedside. Great physicians consulted to- 
gether and all that science could do was done. 
But the baby died. " God did not answer our 
prayers," the parents said, and they com- 
plained bitterly. 

Years afterward the father wrote these 
words to a friend : " I believe now that if 
God had granted my ardent prayers for the 
life of my beautiful first-born son when he was 
taken sick at nine months old, I never would 
have been the man I am now; I would have 
remained the Godless man I had then become. 
But when I stood with my despairing wife 
beside our dead baby, even feeling bitter 

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Ci^e QBeautt of ^elf*Conttol 

toward God because he had not heard our 
cries, I remembered how I had departed from 
God, and returned to him with penitence and 
confession. The death of my boy brought 
me back to Christ." The prayers seemed 
unanswered. At least the answer came not as 
the father wished, but God's way was better. 
The boy's life was not spared, but the father 
was saved. 

There are many who tell us that their 
prayers are unanswered, who, if they knew 
the whole story of these prayers, would see 
that God showed his love and wisdom far more 
wondrously in denying their requests than if 
he had given them just what they pleaded 
for so earnestly. The prayers were really 
answered, but in God's way — not in their 
way — and God's way was better. God is 
too good to give us a stone, however earnestly 
we cry to him for it, thinking it be bread. 
Instead, he will disappoint us by giving us 
bread. 

One of the blessings we need therefore to 
pray for continually is " the patience of un- 

[200] 



answered prayer," that we may be saved from 
impatience as our prayers seem so long in 
being answered, or from disappointment when 
they seem not to be answered at all. No true 
prayer ever is unanswered. It may bring 
no apparent answer at once, but it still waits 
before God and is not forgotten. The answer 
may come in some other form. When St. Paul 
prayed that his distressing " thorn in the 
flesh " might be removed, his request was not 
granted, but instead he received more grace. 
That is, to compensate for the pain that he 
must keep, he would have more of Christ. 
Many times pain is the price God's children 
have to pay for spiriutal strength. We may 
be sure at least that the prayers are never 
unanswered. They bring answers in some 
form at least. 



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Cl^e €>utflot» of ^ong 



To-day y whatever may annoy. 

The word for me is Joy, just simple Joy: 

The joy of life; 

The joy of children and of wife; 

The joy of bright blue skies; 

The joy of rain; the glad surprise 

Of twinkling stars that shine at night; ^ 

The joy of vnnged things upon their flight; 

The joy of noonday, and the tried 

True joyousness of eventide; 

The joy of labor, and of mirth; 

The joy of air, and sea, and earth — 

The countless joys that ever flow from Him 

Whose vast beneficence doth dim 

The lustrous light of day. 

And lavish gifts divine upon our way. 

Whatever be there of Sorrow 

ril put off till To-morrow, 

And when To-morrow comes, why then 

'T wUl be to-day and Joy again! 

John Kendrick Bangs. 



XV 



Cl^e flDutflotj) of ^ong 






N one of his epistles St. Paul 
gives an interesting sugges- 
tion for a beautiful life. He 
says, " Let the word of 
Christ dwell in you richly; 
in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one 
another with psalms and hymns and spiritual 
songs." The point to be noted is that the 
dwelling of the word of Christ in the heart 
produces a musical outflow, a life of song, — 
^' psalms and hymns and spiritual songs." 

The words suggest, in general, good and 
beautiful lives. Every such life is a song. 
In another of his epistles St. Paul says, " We 
are God's workmanship," ajid commentators 
tell us that the word workmanship means 
poem. "We are God's poem." 

Poetry is supposed to be more beautiful 
than prose. It is characterized by fineness 
and loftiness of thought and by charm and 

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Ci^e OBeautt of ^elf^Control 

beauty of expression. It is not merely some- 
thing in rhyme, as some writers seem to think. 
There are rhymes that do not make poetry. 
A life that is God's poem should be very 
beautiful. We may not be able to write 
poetry, like Tennyson's, that will charm by 
its music and by its beauty, but we may live 
poems. We may not be able to write twenty- 
third psalms, but we can live them. We may 
make our life a sweet song. We do not need 
to be poets to do this. A very prosaic man 
may so live that gentle music shall breathe 
from his life all his days. He needs only 
to be true and just and loving. There are 
people whose lives are so sweet, so patient, 
so gentle, so thoughtful, so unselfish, so 
helpful, so full of quiet goodness, that they 
are exquisite poems. They may be plain, 
simple, without fame, without show, without 
brilliance, but the marks of God's hands are 
on them. 

We are God's poems. Every beautiful life 
is a poem. There are people, living in condi- 
tions of hardness whose lives we would say 

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Ci^e €)«tflotD of ^ong 

could not possibly have any music in them. 
Their circumstances are utterly prosaic, with 
no room for sentiment. Even home tender- 
ness would appear to be impossible in their 
experiences of toil, poverty, and pinching. 
Yet even such lives as these, doomed to heavy 
work and dreary hardship, or constant pain, 
ofttimes do become poems in their beauty and 
winningness. There are many men who never 
have an hour's leisure or a bit of luxury in all 
their years, who yet please God continually 
by their faithfulness, their patience, their con- 
tentment, the peace of Christ in their hearts, 
whose lives are lovely songs. You may not 
find these poems in homes of luxury and splen- 
dor. There is more joy ofttimes in the plain 
cottages of those who are poor and love God 
than in the mansions of the rich who care not 
for God. Their lives are poems. We find 
them as we go about these days, sometimes 
in sick rooms, uncomplaining, unmurmuring, 
singing in suffering; sometimes in experi- 
ences of loss and want, patient, trusting. In 
many a lowly home you will find poems finer 

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Cl^e OBeautt of ^elf^Control 

than ever you read In books. The mother of 
Goethe used to say that when her son had a 
grief he turned it into a poem. He who knows 
the secret may turn all his troubles into 
poems. 

Another meaning of this description — 
" psalms and hymns and spiritual songs '' — 
is that our lives should be joyous. God wants 
them to be songs. He wants them to be pure, 
sweet, gentle, and kind. A child asked 
Charles Kingsley to write in her album, and 
he wrote these lines: 

"My fairest child, I have no song to give you; 
No lark could pipe in skies so dull and gray; 
Yet, if you will, one quiet hint I '11 give you 
For every day. 

"I'll tell you how to sing a clearer carol 

Than lark who hails the dawn or breezy down; 
To earn yourself a purer poet's laurel 
Than Shakespeare's crown. 

"Be good, sweet maid, and let who can be clever; 
Do lovely things, not dream them all day long; 
And so make life and death, and the vast forever 
One grand, sweet song." 

We get music into our lives when we live 
sweetly in hard circumstances and amid try- 

[208] 



Cl^e iSDutflott) of ^ong 

ing experiences. Anybody ought to be able 
to live songfuUy in summer days, with flowers 
strewn all along the path, with only gladness 
on every hand. But to live rej oicingly in the 
midst of discouragements, hindrances, and all 
manner of trouble, is a truer test. The 
papers some time since told of a ship coming 
over from Germany in midwinter with a cargo 
of many thousand song birds. At the begin- 
ning of the voyage the weather was warm and 
muggy. Not a bird sang those days. Not 
a note of music was heard. The birds all 
seemed depressed and unhappy. But about 
the third day out it began to get colder, and 
soon the wind was blowing stiffly and there 
was stormy weather. Then the birds began 
to sing. Soon all the twenty-five or thirty 
thousand little throats were pouring out song. 
People often say that if they had only ease 
and luxury all the time, — costly furniture, 
sumptuous meals, automobiles, — they would 
be gladder and would live more sweetly. But 
if our hearts are right we should sing all the 
better, the more joyously, when life is hard, 

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Cl^e OBeautt of ^elf*Conttol 

when we have heavy tasks and sharp trials, 
keen losses and bitter sorrows. A shut-in 
who loved to hear the birds sing at her window 
said she liked the robin best of all the birds 
because the robin sang in the rain. 

There are some people who have not learned 
to sing in the rain. They are easily discour- 
aged. Nehemiah wanted the Jews, who were 
rebuilding the temple, to rejoice. They were 
disheartened, and he wanted them to sing. 
" The joy of the Lord is your strength," he 
told them. They would be stronger if they 
would sing. They would get on better with 
their building. That is the way God wants 
us to do. He does not want them ever to be 
gloomy or unhappy. When the word of 
Christ dwells in them, the result will be, 
" psalms and hymns and spiritual songs." 
St. Paul puts it thus in another of his epistles, 
when he says, "Rejoice in the Lord always: 
again I will say. Rejoice." That is, if you 
are a Christian, you should be a happy one. 
An unhappy Christian is not doing honor to 
Christ. 

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Ci^e €)utflotD of ^ong 

Yet, somehow, many Christians seem not 
to understand this. Not everyone who bears 
the name of Christ sings psalms and hymns 
and spiritual songs in his daily life. There 
are Christians who are not always sweet and 
songful. Some are gloomy, unsympathetic, 
cynical. One man said of his neighbor, " I 
am sure he is a Christian, but he is a disa- 
greeable one." Of another man, in contrast 
with this one, a neighbor said that other 
people learned at his feet the kindliness, the 
gentleness, the sympathy, the considerateness 
of Christ himself. He lived psalms and hymns 
wherever he went. 

God wants our lives to be songs every day, 
every night, everywhere. He makes the music 
bars for us and we are to set the notes on 
them. The notes are our obediences. God's 
will is an anthem set for us to sing. There 
never would be any discords in the music if we 
always did God's will and did it sweetly. Any 
disobedience, however, any wrong thing we do, 
any unloving thing, will break the harmony. 
A perfectly holy life would be a faultless song. 

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Ci^e OBeautt of telecontrol i 

If we would have such musical outflow in 
our lives we must keep love in our hearts. 
Nothing but love makes music. Hate is al- 
ways discordant. One of the finest things the 
world has heard in recent days is the news of 
the movement for a treaty of international 
peace. This is a sign of the coming fulfill- 
ment of the glorious reign of peace of which 
the prophets spoke, when wars shall cease, 
when the nations shall beat their swords into 
plowshares, and their spears into pruning- 
hooks. There is a picture called Peace. It 
is of a quiet meadow scene, with a cannon 
lying amid the grass and flowers. A lamb 
is feeding there. The warlike gun is now part 
of the picture of peace. But the gun, even 
resting, spoils the picture. Here is something 
better. A tourist tells of visiting a little 
village in Germany where the church bells 
that rang on Sundays were made of cannon 
that had been used in the Franco-Prussian 
War. Instead of belching forth death, the 
guns now proclaim peace. Dr. Jowett tells 
of a shop where he saw workmen making 

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Cl^e i€)ii:tflotP of ^ong 

Boer shells into pots and dishes. That is 
precisely what the prophet foretold concern- 
ing the changing of implements of war into 
the implements of peace. Every Christian 
should help to make it true that nations 
shall learn war no more. Then would the 
angels' song, " Peace on earth, good will to 
men," become part of the glad life of the 
world. 

This life of song — psalms and hymns 
and spiritual songs — should be the music 
of every Christian community, of every Chris- 
tian home. How much broken music there is 
in many homes ! Instruments out of tune 
make discordance in the music. Musical 
people speak of certain harsh sounds in in- 
struments as wolf -notes. There are wolf- 
notes in the music of some homes where vio- 
lent tempers are indulged, where jealousy, 
hate, lust, the wild utterances of passion, mar 
the music. The word of Christ dwelling in 
the heart would produce a life of song — • 
" psalms and hymns and spiritual songs," — • 
every jarring discord hushed into harmony. 

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Cl^e OBeautt of telecontrol 

That is what Christian peace is. That is 
what love is. 

There is One who can take our lives, with 
all their jangled chords, their faults and sin, 
and bring from them the music of love, joy, 
and peace. There is an old legend of an in- 
strument that long hung silent upon a castle 
wall. Its strings were broken. It was cov- 
ered with dust. No one understood it, and 
no one could put it in order. Many had tried 
to do this, but had failed. No one could play 
on it. But one day a stranger came to the 
castle. He saw the instrument on the wall. 
Taking it down., he quickly brushed the webs 
from it, gently reset the broken strings, then 
played upon it^ making marvelous music. 



"Then chords long silent woke beneath his touch, 
And hearts and voices round were strangely stilled 

As deeper rolled the harmony and grand. 
Till all the castle with the notes was filled; 

It pealed the war notes 'mid the conflict's din. 
Then sank into a solemn requiem. 

** Beneath the fingers of the master hand 

Gladly it echoed youth's ambitious dream; 
Then, gently, like the ripples on the shore. 
Whispered sweet confidence in love supreme. 
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Ci^e €>utflot» of ^ong 

Changeful the theme as waves upon the sea. 
From low-breathed hope to psalms of victory." 

This is a parable of what Christ does for 
those who believe on him. Every human life 
in its natural state is a harp, tarnished by 
sin, its strings broken. It is capable, how- 
ever, of giving forth music marvelously rich 
and beautiful. But first it must be restored, 
its strings reset; and the only one who can 
do this is the Master of the harp, the Lord 
Jesus Christ. Only he can bring the jangled 
chords of our lives into tune, so that when 
played upon they shall give forth rich music. 
If we would have our lives become songs, we 
must surrender our hearts to Christ, that he 
may repair and restore them. Then we shall 
be able to make music, not in our individual 
lives only, but in whatever relations our lot 
may be cast, and in whatsoever circumstances 
it may fall to us to dwell. 

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, 
and then songs will pour out in all your ex- 
periences. One sat before an open fire, where 
green logs were burning, and listened to the 

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Ci^e OBeautt of ^elf*Control 

weird music that the fire brought out, and 
spoke this little parable : When the logs were 
green trees in the woods the birds sat on the 
branches and twittered and sang, and the 
notes sank away into the wood of the trees 
and hid there. And now the fire brings out 
the hidden music. So we may let the words 
of Christ sink into our hearts as we read them, 
ponder them, love them. Then, wherever we 
go, whatever we do, whatever our experiences 
are, if we suffer, if we have struggle, if we 
have sorrow, if we have joy, the music will 
come out in psalms and hymns and spiritual 
songs. 



[216] 



feeing ti^e ^unnv ^ttie 



**Open toide thy doors to the sunlight. 
Bid the doubts and the shadows flee. 
The skies are blue and the world is fair. 
The Father keeps thee still in his care; 

What is it that troubleth thee? 
The hand that guides the stars and the sun 
Is the hand that holdeth thy trembling one,** 



XVI 

feeing ti^e ^unni^ ^int 




HANKSGIVING is one of 

the cardinal virtues. One of 
the finest marks in a noble 
life is perennial praise. Yet 
this spirit is rare. It is the 
exception to find among people one who sees 
something to thank God for in all life's cir- 
cumstances. The great majority of people 
are grumblers. They seem to be looking al- 
ways for unpleasant things. 

For example, there appears to be a very 
common disposition to see the dark and dis- 
couraging side of Christian life and Christian 
work. There appears to be just now a 
chronic tendency in the religious press and 
among Christian ministers to think and talk 
dishearteningly of the condition of things in 
the churches. Almost continuously one reads 
announcements of sermons on such topics as 
why men do not go to church. Or the ques- 

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Ci^e 13eautt of ^elf-Control 

tion is asked and discussed in the religious 
weekly papers, or even in secular newspapers 
and magazines. Many reasons are formu- 
lated and the matter is considered just as 
seriously as if it were true that men do not 
go to church any more. 

Most likely, however, the fact is that more 
men do go to church, or at least more men are 
interested in religious life and work, at pres- 
ent, than have been at any time in the last 
hundred years. It has been shown over and 
over again that there has been a marvelous 
progress in the influence of Christianity 
within a century. But in some way the 
croakers give out the impression that religion 
is waning, that the churches are dwindling 
and dying out, that very few men are inter- 
ested in the work of Christ. The truth of the 
assertions is taken for granted, and ministers 
and church officers, as well as the rank and 
file, go about bemoaning the sad condition of 
things and wondering what is going to be 
the end of it all. 

Not long since somebody sent out a scare 
[220] 



feeing ti^e ^imni? ^iDe 

article about the exhaustion of the material 
in the sun. This material is being consumed 
at an amazing rate, and the writer showed 
that in a certain number of thousands of 
years the sun will be burnt out, becoming only 
a big, cold, dark cinder, like the moon. What 
shall we do then? There is even less to alarm 
any thoughtful person in the talk about the 
dying out of Christianity than in the asser- 
tion that the sun is burning out. Those who 
are pessimistic about the scarcity of men in 
the churches and the general decadence of 
Christianity ought to look up the statistics, 
ought to read the reports of the wonderful 
work and progress of Young Men's Christian 
Associations, of the Laymen's Missiona*ry 
Movement, of the great missionary conven- 
tions and of the story of the Christian work 
that is being done in the cities, and the tre- 
mendous things the Sunday schools are doing 
throughout the world. 

Such a view of the situation ought to set 
in motion a new tide of cheer, hope, encour- 
agement, in the churches and among Christian 

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%])t OBeautt of telecontrol 

people. Instead of deploring the dying out 
of Christian life and activity there should 
begin now a new era of gladness, of enthusi- 
asm, of praise, for the great things the church 
is doing. 

The question was asked of two church offi- 
cers, " How are matters in your church this 
year? '' The first spoke discouragingly. The 
church to which he belonged seemed dead, he 
said. The attendance was not large. The 
Sunday school had fallen off. The prayer 
meetings were only a handful. The men in 
the membership appeared indifferent. Even 
the pastor did not seem as enthusiastic as he 
used to be. The whole tone of the good man's 
talk was lugubrious. There was not a glad, 
cheerful, praising word in all he said. 

The other man, to the same question, an- 
swered with enthusiasm. The meetings were 
full. The pastor was working with earnest- 
ness and hope. Everybody was eager to 
work. A thanksgiving tone ran through all 
his words. A church with such sunshiny men 
for its officers will have twice the success and 

[222] 



blessing that a church can have whose officers 
are gloomy, disheartened, and hopeless. 

But it is not in religious life and work only 
that there is so much lack of cheer and hope. 
In all lines of life one finds the same spirit. 
In many homes there is almost an entire ab- 
sen<;e of the thanksgiving spirit. A shadow 
rests on all the life. There is an immense 
amount of whining heard. Nothing is quite 
satisfactory. There is little singing. The 
quest seems to be for spots and mistakes, 
something to blame and condemn. How much 
better it would be, how much more of heaven 
we should get into our homes if we would train 
ourselves to find the beautiful things and good 
things in each other and in all our experiences 
and circumstances! Anybody can find fault 
— it takes no genius to do this. Genius is far 
better shown in finding something to praise 
and commend in imperfect people, in hard 
conditions. 

Here is a paragraph from some one, which 
suggests a better way at home than the com- 
plaining way : " She knew how to forget dis- 

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Ci^e 'Btautv of telecontrol 

agreeable things. She kept her nerves well 
in hand, and inflicted them on no one. She 
mastered the art of saying pleasant things. 
She did not expect too much from her friends. 
She made whatever work came to her con- 
genial. She retained her illusions and did 
not believe all the world wicked and unkind. 
She relieved the miserable and sympathized 
with the sorrowful. She never forgot that 
kind words and a gentle smile cost nothing, 
but are priceless treasures to the discouraged. 
She did unto others as she would be done by, 
and now that old age has come to her, and 
there is a halo of white hair about her head, 
she is beloved and considered. This is the 
secret of a long life and a happy one." 

Everything depends upon the way we look 
at things, whether we see shadow or bright- 
ness in them. Miss Mulock, in one of her 
books, tells of a gentleman and a lady who 
were passing through a lumber yard, by a 
dirty, foul-smelling river. The lady re- 
marked, " How good these pine boards 
smell ! " " Pine boards ! " exclaimed her com- 

[ 224 ] 



feeing ti^t ^unnt ^itie 

panion. " Just smell this foul river ! " " No, 
thank you," the lady replied, " I prefer to 
smell the pine boards." 

The woman was wiser than her friend. 
She was entirely right in her way of dealing 
with the conditions. Both the foul river and 
the fragrant pine boards were present in the 
surroundings, and it was a question which of 
the two she should allow to impress her. She 
had the happy faculty of trying always to find 
the most cheerful quality in her circumstances, 
and so it was the sweetness of the air and not 
the foulness of the river that she chose to find 
in her walk that day. We may train ourselves 
always to make the same distinction and choice 
in what we find in our circumstances — to 
see the beauty, the pleasure, the charm, rather 
than the ugliness, the pain, the disagreeable- 
ness. Too many people never see anything 
but the discouraging aspect of things, so they 
are never in a really thankful mood. This 
is not a Thanksgiving homily, but there can 
be no harm in saying that a little sunny- 
hearted philosophy would make a world of 

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Ci^e i$eautt of telecontrol 

difference in the lives of a great many men 
and women. 

Things are not going so terribly wrong, 
after all, as the croakers think they are. 
There are always a lot of things that are good 
and comfortable — far more indeed than there 
are painful and unhappy things. We have 
only to make up our minds to find the bright 
spots and make the most of them. One Janu- 
ary day, when the house was cold, the dog 
was trying to be warm as he could. He was 
lying in the parlor, which was not heated. 
Along in the forenoon a beam of sunshine 
came through the shutters and fell on the 
floor, making a patch of sunshine on the car- 
pet. The drowsing, shivering dog saw it, 
got up, stretched himself, walked to the spot 
and lay down in the bright place. The dog 
was a philosopher. Instead of staying in the 
chill and darkness when he saw even an inch 
or two of warmth and light he appropriated 
it. There is not one of us who on the gloomi- 
est day of his life cannot find at least a square 
yard of sunshine somewhere. Let us go and 

[226] 



lie down in it and take the comfort we can 
find in it. 

There are a good many people who make 
life harder for others by indulging in this 
habit of always taking disheartening views 
and always saying dispiriting things. They 
call on a sick friend and tell him how ill he 
looks, and the man is worse all day after- 
wards. They meet one who is in some trouble 
and sympathize with him in such a way that 
the trouble seems ten times greater. They 
come upon a neighbor who is discouraged, and 
they talk with him until he is almost in de- 
spair. They think they are showing a kindly 
spirit in all this, but they are really only 
adding to the burdens of their friends and 
making life infinitely harder for them. 

There are men in these very days who are 
evermore putting doubts into the minds of 
others and starting questions which only 
cause fear and uncertainty. We ought not 
to add to the spiritual perplexity of men by 
holding up shreds of torn pages, as if our 
Christianity were something riddled to tatters 

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Ci^e istantv of ^elf*Control 

by those who have thrown away their child- 
hood faith. " Give me your beliefs," said 
Goethe ; " I have doubts enough of my own." 
So people are saying to us, " Give us your 
hopes, your joys, your sunshine, your con- 
fidence, your uplifting faiths ; we have sor- 
rows, tears, clouds, fears, uncertainties 
enough of our own." People need to be 
helped, not hindered. 

Nine of every ten persons you will meet 
to-morrow will be carrying as many and as 
heavy loads as they can possibly carry. They 
will not need to have their burdens lifted 
away — that would not be the truest kind- 
ness to them; their burdens are God's gifts, 
and in bearing them they are to grow; but 
they will need cheer, strength, that they may 
walk steadily, bravely, and unfalteringly 
under their loads. There is nothing the world 
needs so much as cheer. A discourager is 
always a misanthrope. He makes it harder 
for every one to be good, to be strong and 
true. An encourager is a friend of men. 
He is the boon of his race. He is a benefac- 

[228] 



feeing ti^e ^unn^ ^iDe 

tor. He is an inspirer of joy. He is a foun- 
tain of love. Christ himself was always an 
encourager. He never spoke a discouraging 
word to any man or woman. In the most 
hopeless life he saw the possibilities of heav- 
enly glory. We must be like our Master and 
must live like him if we would do our part in 
making the world better and putting sunshine 
into it. 

Let us then cease forever our miserable 
habit of prophesying evil. Men do go to 
church, and the way to get more of them to 
go is to make our churches more sunny, more 
cheerful, more human, more helpful, more 
like sweet and holy homes. Things good are 
not all decaying and dying out — and the 
way to get more good into the world is to 
stop our ungrateful fault-finding and dis- 
couragement and begin to help everybody to 
be good and brave and true. Thanksgiving 
is the word; if we have thanksgiving lives 
we shall have lives of blessing, and everyone 
who knows us will begin to love Christ more 
and love his neighbor more. 

[229] 



Clfte ^tort of tl^e jfTolDetr f anHjs 



' Where duty calls in life's conflict. 

There is your place! 
Where you may think you are useless. 

Hide not your face. 
God placed you here for a purpose. 

Whatever it be; 
Know He has chosen you for it: ' 

Work loyally.'' 

Quoted in " The British Weekly.** 



XVII 



Ci^e ^tot^ of ti^e jfolDeU l$mh^ 




NE of the finest secrets of 
success lies in finding one's 
true place. Many a life with 
splendid qualities comes to 
little because it fails in this 
regard. Many a man who struggles through 
years in a profession and never rises to dis- 
tinction, never accomplishes anything that 
gives satisfaction to himself or to his friends, 
would have won a worthy record in some line 
of business or in a trade. There are men who 
imagine they have talents for almost any kind 
of calling, that they could do almost anything 
that man can do. But the truth is that no 
man has in him a university of qualifications. 
Every man has a talent for something. There 
is one thing he can do well, if he trains him- 
self for it. 

Probably mothers spoil a good many lives 
by trying to be their divinity. They decide 

I 223] 



Ci^e Beauty of telecontrol 

that their boys shall be mmisters or doctors 
or artists or inventors, and teach them in 
infancy what they are going to be in life, 
regardless of what their natural gifts may 
be. The result is that the boys grow up 
without being free to think for themselves, 
biased and constrained toward some calling 
for which perhaps they have no natural fit- 
ness whatever. 

There are many sad failures in life because 
of a wrong choice of place. Some men stumble 
along, trying one thing and failing, then try- 
ing something else, and probably failing again 
and again, till half their life is gone and they 
are still unsettled, without a place in which 
they are content or in which they are doing 
the work God made them to do. 

It would seem to be a great blessing to 
masses of people if there were some way by 
which boys could be shown very early In their 
lives what they could do best, and in what 
calling they could make the most of their 
lives. But this is not the divine way. God 
leads us usually through series of providences 

[234] 



m^t ^tort of ti^e ifolDeU i^antiis 

and experiences and in the end we seem to 
have to find our own way. Nevertheless, God 
is wiUing to guide us. Indeed, he has a plan 
for every one of our lives, something he wants 
us to do, a niche he wants us to fill, and he 
will show us the way to our place and to our 
duty. 

The chief thing for us is to be willing to 
take the place for which he has made us, to 
do the work he has fitted us to do. We must 
be satisfied to do this, however lowly the place 
may be. God's place for us may not be a 
place of fame — it may be an obscure place. 
One of the hardest lessons we have to learn 
may be the taking of an obscure place after 
we have been trying for a while to get into 
a conspicuous place and have failed in filling 
it. When we learn at last that we cannot do 
the great things we wanted to do, it is beauti- 
ful in us to accept our disappointment and 
take graciously and sweetly the lowlier place 
and to begin to do the less brilliant things 
we can do. 

Many persons are familiar with Diirer's 
[235] 



Cl^e I3eautt of ^elf-Conttol - 

Folded Hands, a picture of two hands clasped 
as in prayer. There is a charming story of 
the way the famous picture came to be 
painted. Here is the story, as it comes to 
us. Whether authentic or not, it is interest- 
ing and has its lessons. It illustrates too the 
lesson that has been suggested. 

A good while ago, in quaint old Nurem- 
berg, lived two boys, Franz Knigstein and 
Albrecht Diirer. Both wished to be artists 
and both began to study. The parents of the 
boys were poor and worked hard to help their 
sons. Albrecht had genius but Franz had 
only love for art without real artistic skill. 
Virions of beautiful pictures haunted him, 
but his hand lacked the deftness to put 
these visions on canvas. Still the boys both 
worked hard and hoped for success. 

Years passed and they planned to make, 
each of them, an etching of our Lord's pas- 
sion. When they compared their finished 
work, that of Franz was cold and without life, 
while Albrecht's was instinct with beauty and 
pathos. Franz saw it all as he looked upon 

[236] 



Cl^e ^tort of tl^e f olDeD f anD^ 

the two etchings and knew now that he could 
never be an artist. His heart was almost 
broken, but he did not murmur. Only for 
one passionate moment he buried his face in 
his hands. Then he said to Albrecht, in a 
voice broken and sad, but full of manly cour- 
age : " The good Lord gave me no such gift 
as this of yours. But something he has yet 
for me to do. Some homely duty is waiting 
somewhere for me. But now be you artist of 
Nuremburg and I " — " Be still ! Franz, 
be quiet one minute,'' cried Albrecht, seizing 
pencil and paper. Franz supposed that Al- 
brecht was putting some finishing touches to 
his exquisite drawing and waited patiently, 
his hands still clasped together. With his 
swift pencil Albrecht drew a few lines and 
showed the sketch to his friend. 

" Why, those are only my hands," Franz 
said. " Why did you draw them? " 

" I sketched them," said Albrecht, " as you 
stood there making the surrender of your life 
so nobly and bravely. I said to myself then, 
' Those hands which will never paint a pic- 

[237] 



m^t QBeautt of telecontrol 

ture can now most certainly make one.' I 
have faith in those hands, my brother-friend. 
They will go to men's hearts in the days to 
come." 

Albrecht's prophecy has been fulfilled. 
Into the world of love and duty there has gone 
the story so touching and helpful in its beauti- 
ful simplicity, and into the world of art has 
gone the picture — for Albrecht Diirer's 
Folded Hands are but the hands of Franz 
Knigstein, as they were folded that day in 
sweet, brave resignation when he gave up his 
heart's dearest wish, and yet had faith to 
believe that the Lord had some homely duty 
worth his doing. 

This story has its lessons which it is worth 
our while to note and remember. For one 
thing it teaches that if we cannot do the rare 
and beautiful things we see other people doing 
and aspire to do ourselves, we can at least 
do something that will please God and be a 
blessing to the world. It is not every man's 
mission to be a great artist. God has a plan 
for each life, and we best honor him when we 

[238] 



Cl^e ^tort of ti^e ifoltseD f anti^ 

discover what he has made us to do and then 
quietly and patiently do it. Albrecht Diirer 
had the artist's gift. Franz Knigstein had 
love for beauty and wished to be an artist. 
But it became evident to him after a time of 
earnest, diligent trial, that he never could 
acquire the artist's skill. He had not the 
genius for it. It was no dishonor to Franz 
that his gifts were not equal to Albrecht's. 
He had not been indolent in study or work. 
There are men whose failure to be great is 
their own fault. They have never done their 
best. They have trifled and loitered. Some 
of the saddest tragedies in life are the trage- 
dies of indolence. But Franz had done his 
best. Only his gift was less brilliant than his 
friend's. We need never feel that we have 
failed because another surpasses us in some 
particular line. If we have truly done our 
best, we have succeeded. 

A large element in success Is In being in 
the right place, — the place for which God 
made us, and the place for which we have the 
gift. Many fail, never making anything 

[239] 



W^t "Beauty of ^elf^Control 

worth while of their lives because they are 
trying to do something they have not the 
talent for doing. There are men in the pro- 
fessions who do not get on, yet who would 
have done well, achieving success, if they had 
found the right place, — the place for which 
they had talents. It is most important, there- 
fore, that young men in choosing their occu- 
pation and their work shall seek divine guid- 
ance and do what they were made to do, what 
they can do. It is better to stand in a high 
rank in a lowly occupation than utterly fail 
in a profession or calling which seems to be 
more honorable. It is not his occupation that 
gives dignity to a man, but the way he fills 
it; not the things he does, but the way he 
does them. 

Another lesson from the Folded Hands is 
that when it becomes evident to any one that 
he cannot do the things he has set his heart 
on doing, when he discovers that he cannot 
win the prize, he should submit courageously 
and cheerfully, and then turn with eagerness 
and zest to the things he can do. Of course, 

[240] 



Cl^e ^tott of ti^e ifolDeD i^anDjs 

he should never give up too easily. We should 
always do our best, remembering that we shall 
have to give account to God for the possibili- 
ties he has put into our lives, never wrapping 
any talent in a napkin, or burying it in the 
earth. But, after doing our best, It may 
prove to be with us as It proved to be with 
Franz Knigstein, that the lofty attainment we 
had hoped to reach is beyond our ability and 
our skill. If so, we should quietly acquiesce, 
turning to the plainer work which may be 
given us to do and doing it contentedly. 

Many persons are made unhappy by fret- 
ting over disappointed ambitions. They try 
to do something conspicuous, to win honor 
or reward In a certain line, and fail. Then 
instead of accepting the failure sweetly and 
taking up the lowlier and less conspicuous 
tasks cheerfully, they chafe and sometimes 
lose heart and grow bitter. The way Franz 
bore himself when he saw that his friend had 
won the prize was very noble. His disap- 
pointment was great. A thousand dreams of 
success and honor fell into the dust. He saw 

[241 ] 



Ci^e "Beauty of telecontrol 

another wearing the garland he had hoped to 
win and wear. He heard the people's huzzas 
and cheers as the other man received the mark 
of distinction which he himself had hoped to 
receive. Many persons in such an experience 
would have grown bitter and envious and 
would have become angry and resentful. But 
Franz acted nobly. He recognized the splen- 
did ability of Albrecht and honored it. Here 
it is that ofttimes envy asserts itself and does 
its mischievous work, but there was not a 
shadow of envy in the heart of Franz. He 
was bitterly disappointed, but not an envious 
word of Albrecht passed his lips. " The good 
Lord gave me no such gift, Albrecht, as this 
of yours." It is one of the finest achievements 
of a noble spirit to recognize the genius or 
the ability that surpasses one's own. It is an 
heroic and beautiful thing for the boy who 
has been defeated in the game to throw up 
his hat and cheer for his rival. His victory 
is greater than if he had won in the contest. 
To master one's own spirit is the greatest of 
all victories. 

[242] 



€]^e ^totv of tl^e ifolDeti f anDjs 

The lesson of the Folded Hands teaches us 
that if we are not to have the highest place, 
we should willingly and gladly take the place 
to which God assigns us. The greatest and 
most glorious thing any one can do any day 
or any hour is God's will for that day or 
hour. If that is earth's humblest task it still 
is greater for us than if by straying from 
our true place we should sit on a king's throne 
a while. 



[243] 



Comfort (ox Cireti if eet 



And, as the path of duty is made plain. 

May grace he given that I may walk therein. 

Not like the hireling for his selfish gain, . . . 
But, cheerful, in the light around me thrown. 

Walking as one to pleasant service led. 

Doing God's will as if it were my own. 

Yet trusting not in mine, hut in His strength alone!'* 

J. G. Whittier. 

,..If, through patient toil, we reach the land 
Where tired feet, vnth sandals loosed, may rest. 

When we shall clearly see and understand, 
I know that we vyiU say, * God knew the best' " 



mi^n 


^M 






iKggSf ^ma 


^gS^ffl 


i^^ 



XVIII 

Comfort for CireD feet 

GOOD many people come to 
the close of the day with tired 
feet. There are those whose 
duties require them to walk 
all the day. There are the 
men who patrol the city's streets, the guardi- 
ans of our homes. There are the postmen 
who bring letters to our doors. There are 
the messengers who are always hurrying to 
and fro on their errands. There are the pil- 
grims who travel on foot along the hard, 
dusty highways. There are those who fol- 
low the plow or perform other parts of the 
farmer's work. Then there are sales-people 
in the great stores who scarcely ever have 
an opportunity to sit down. Countless 
persons in factories and mills have the same 
experience. There are thousands of women 
in their home work who rarely stop to rest 
during the long days. Upstairs and down 

[247] 



r Ci^e idtmtv of telecontrol 

again, from kitchen to nursery, out to the 
market and to the store^ in and out, from 
early morning till late at night, these busy 
women are ever plodding in their house- 
wifely duties. 

"Man works from sun to sun; 
Woman's work is never done." 

No wonder, then, that there are so many 
sore and tired feet at the end of the day. 
How welcome night is to the armies of weary 
people who then drop their tools or their 
yardsticks or their implements of toil, and 
hurry home again. How good it is , to sit 
down and rest when the day's tasks are done ! 
There would seem to be need in a book like 
this for a chapter for people with tired feet. 

What is the comfort for such? For one 
thing, there is the thought of duty done. It 
is always a comfort, when one Is tired, to re- 
flect that one has grown tired in doing one's 
proper work. A squandered day, a day spent 
in idleness, may not leave such tired feet in 
the evening, but neither does it give the sweet 

[248] 



Comfort for CircD fttt 

pleasure that a busy day gives, even with its 
bhstered and aching feet. 

There is a great deal of useless standing 
or walking that does not get this comfort. 
There are young men who stand on the street 
corners all day and sometimes far into the 
night, who must have weary feet when at last 
they turn homeward. Yet they have in their 
hearts no such compensating satisfaction as 
those who have toiled all the long hours in 
some honorable calling. Idleness brings only 
shame and self-contempt. Then there are 
certain kinds of occupation which give to 
weariness no sweetening comfort. A day 
spent in sinful work may make the feet 
tired, but has no soothing for them in the 
evening's rest. 

But all duty well done has its restful peace 
of heart when the day's tasks are finished 
and laid down. Conscience whispers, " You 
were faithful to-day; you did all that was 
given you to do ; you did not shirk nor 
skimp." The conscience is the whisper of 
God and its commendation gives comfort. 

[249] 



Cl^c IBtautp of ^ elf Control 

But does God really take notice of one's 
daily, common work, — plowing, delivering let- 
ters, selling goods and cleaning house? Yes; 
we serve God just as truly in our daily task- 
work as in our prajang and Bible reading. 
The woman who keeps the great church clean, 
sweeping the dust from the aisles, is serving 
her Lord as well, if her heart be right, as the 
gorgeously robed minister who performs his 
sacred part in the holy worship. In one of 
his poems George Macdonald speaks of stand- 
ing in a vast church, with its marble acres, 
worn with knees and feet, and seeing priests 
flitting among the candles, men coming and 
going, and then a poor woman with her 
broom, bowed to her work on the floors, 
and hearing the Master's voice, saying, 
"Daughter, thou sweepest well my floor." 

The thought that we have done our duty 
for another day and have pleased God, should 
always be like soothing balm to our sore and 
tired feet at the end of the day. The 
Master's commendation takes the sting out 
of any suffering endured in doing even weari- 

[250] 



Comfort for CireD jf eet 

some work for him. When we know that 
Christ in heaven has noticed our toil, and 
has approved of it, accepting it as service 
for himself, we are ready to toil another 
day. 

There is also comfort for tired feet in the 
coming of night, when one can rest. The 
day's tasks are finished, the rounds are all 
made, the errands are all run, the store is 
closed, the children are in bed, the household 
work is done, and tired people can sit down 
and rest. The tight shoes are taken off, 
loose slippers are substituted, and the even- 
ing's quiet begins. Who can tell the blessings 
that night brings to earth's weary toilers? 
Suppose there were no night, no rest, that 
the heavy sandals could never be laid off, that 
one could never sit down, that there could be 
no pause in the toil ; how wearisome life would 
be! Night is a holy time, because it brings 
rest. The rest is all the sweeter, too, because 
the feet are tired and sore. Those who never 
have been weary do not realize the blessings 
which come with the night. 

[251] 



Ci^e Tdtautv of telecontrol 

"Night is the time for rest. 

How sweet, when labors dose. 
To gather round an aching breast 

The curtain of repose. 
Stretch the tired limbs and lay the head 
Down on our own delightful bed!" 

Wonderful is the work of repair in life that 
goes on while we sleep. Men bring the great 
ships to dock after they have plowed the 
waves or battled with the storms and are 
battered and strained and damaged, and there 
they repair them and make them ready to 
go again to sea. At night our jaded and ex- 
hausted bodies are dry-docked after the day's 
conflict and toil, and while we sleep the mys- 
terious process of restoration and reinvigora- 
tion goes on ; and when morning comes, we 
are ready to begin a new day of toil and care. 
We lie down tired, feeling sometimes that 
we never can do another day's work ; but the 
morning comes again, we rise, renewed in 
body and spirit, full of enthusiasm, and 
strong and brave for the hardest tasks. 

What a blessing sleep is ! It charms away 
the weariness from the aching limbs ; it 
brushes the clouds from the sky; it refills 

[252] 



Comfott for CiteD fttt 

life's drained fountains. One rendering of 
the old psalm verse is, " So he giveth to his 
beloved in sleep." Surely God does give us 
many rich blessings in our sleep. Angels 
come then with their noiseless tread into our 
chambers, leave their holy gifts, and steal 
away unheard. God himself touches us with 
his benedictions while our eyes are closed in 
slumber. He shuts our ears to earth's noises 
and holds us apart from its strifes and tur- 
moils, while he builds up again in us all that 
the day had torn down. He makes us forget 
our griefs and cares, and sends sweet dreams 
to restore the brightness and the gladness 
to our tired spirits. 

There is something very wonderful in the 
mystery of sleep, in the way God comes to 
us in the darkness and the silence to bless us. 
A poet speaks of God's work in the night for 
his children: 

"I hear Him coming in the night 
Afar, and yet I know not how; 

His steps make music low and sweet; 
Sometimes the nails are in his feet. 
Does darkness give God better light 
Than day to find a weary brow?" 
[25S] 



d)e laeautt of telecontrol 

Another comfort for tired feet is in the 
thought that Jesus understands the weari- 
ness. We know that his feet were tired at 
the end of many a long day. We are ex- 
pressly told of one occasion when, being 
wearied by his long journey, he sat down on 
a well curb to rest. He had come far through 
the dust and the heat, and his feet were sore 
and weary. All his days were busy days, for 
he was ever going about on errands of love. 
Many a day he had scarcely time to eat. 
Though never weary of, he was ofttlmes weary 
in, his Father's business. When our feet are 
tired after the day's journeys, it ought to 
be a very precious comfort to remember that 
our blessed Master had like experience, and 
therefore is able to sympathize with us. It is 
one of the chief sadnesses of many lives that 
people do not understand them, do not sym- 
pathize with them. They move about us, our 
neighbors and companions, even our closest 
friends, and laugh and jest and are happy 
and light-hearted, while we, close beside them, 
are suffering. They are not aware of our 

[254] 



Comfort for CireD feet 

pain, and if they were, they could not give 
us real sympathy, because they never have 
had any experience of their own that would 
interpret to them our experience. Only those 
who have suffered in some way can truly 
sympathize with those who suffer. One who 
is physically strong, and never has felt the 
burden of weariness cannot understand the 
weakness of another, who, under the least 
exertion, tires. The man of athletic frame, 
who can walk all day without fatigue, has 
small sympathy with the feeble man, who is 
exhausted in a mile. 

When we think of the glory and greatness 
of Christ, it would seem to us at first that 
he cannot care for our little ills and suffer- 
ings ; but when we remember that he lived on 
earth, and knows our common life by personal 
experience, and that he is " touched with the 
feeling of our infirmities," we know that he 
understands us and sympathizes with us in 
every pain. When we think of him sitting 
weary on a well-curb after his long, hard 
journey, we are sure that even in heaven he 

[255] 



m)t iBtautv of telecontrol 

knows what tired feet mean to us after the 
day's toil. The comfort even of human sym- 
pathy, without any real relief, puts new 
strength and courage into the heart of one 
who suffers. The sympathy of Christ ought 
to lift the weary one above all weakness, above 
all faintness, into victorious joy. 

We should remember too that Christ's feet 
were tired and hurt, that our feet may be 
soothed in their pain and weariness, and at 
last may stand on the golden streets of heaven. 
There is a legend of Jesus which tells of his 
walking by the sea, beautiful in his form, 
wearing brown sandals upon his feet. Father 
Ryan puts it thus : 

"He walked beside the sea; he took his sandals off 
To bathe his weary feet in the pure cool wave — 
For he had walked across the desert sands 
All day long — and as he bathed his feet 
He murmured to himself, * Three years ! Three years ! 
And then, poor feet, the cruel nails will come 
And make you bleed, but that blood will lave 
All weary feet on all their thorny ways.'" 

There is still another comfort for tired 
feet in the hope of the rest that is waiting. 
This incessant toil is not to go on forever. 

[256] 



Comfort for CiteD feet 

We are going to a land where the longest 
journeys will produce no weariness, where 
" tired feet with sandals loose may rest " from 
all that tires. The hope of heaven, shining 
in glory, such a little way before us, ought 
to give us courage and strength to endure 
whatever of pain, conflict, and suffering may 
come to us in those short days. 

"The burden of my days is hard to bear. 
But God knows best; 
And I have prayed — but vain has been my prayer 
For rest, sweet rest. — 

"'Twill soon be o'er; 
Far down the west 
Life's sun is setting, and I see the shore 
Where I shall rest." 



[257] 



Ci^e powv of ti^e Mi^m lorb 



** But lead me, Man Divine, 
Wherever thou vnlVsty only that I may find 

At the journey^ s end thy image there 
And grow more like to it. For art not thou 

The human shadow of the infinite Love 
That made and fills the endless universe. 

The very Word of him, the unseen, unknown, 
Eternal Good that rules the summer fiower 

And all the worlds that people starry space?** 

R. W. Gilder. 

"Not to ourselves we live the life He giveth. 
His resurrection life, our own to-day; 
He only in Chrisfs resurrection liveth 
Who gives, as Jesus gave, his life away,** 



XIX 



Cl^e l^otoet of tl^e Mi^zn JLotD 




HE power of the risen Lord 
began to appear immediately 
after the resurrection. His 
death seemed to be the end of 
everything. While he lived 
he had had great power. His ministry was 
radiant with kindness. His personal influ- 
ence was felt over all the land. His gracious 
words as he went about left benedictions 
everywhere. He had shown himself sympa- 
thetic with all suffering and sorrow. He 
went about doing good among the people 
until he was known everywhere as a man who 
loved men. His kindness had made him uni- 
versally beloved. He never wrought a mira- 
cle for effect, to win applause for himself. 
When in his ministry he did anything super- 
natural it was in love and compassion for 
people. He multiplied the loaves to feed a 
hungry multitude. He healed blindness, 

[261] 



Cl^e istautv of telecontrol 

cured the lame and the sick, opened deaf ears, 
all in sympathy with human distress. 

But when he was put to death his power 
seemed to end. He was helpless in the hands 
of his enemies. He was no stronger than the 
weakest in the land. No hand was lifted for 
his deliverance. His own strength which had 
wrought so resistlessly in mighty wonders 
gave no sign of power. His name seemed 
buried in oblivion in the death which he died. 
Never did any man appear so utterly undone 
in his death as did Jesus. 

But the moment of his resurrection his 
power began to show itself. He came from 
the grave like a God. Those who saw him 
were strangely impressed by his presence. 
Without resuming his familiar converse with 
his friends, he showed himself to them again 
and again, not in such ways as to awe or be- 
wilder them with the splendors of his glory 
but in such simple manifestations as to im- 
press them with the fact of his continued 
humanness. Mary supposed he was the gar- 
dener, so familiar were his form and manner. 

[262 ] 



Cl^e po'oftt of tlje Mi^m Horn 

To the two disciples journeying into the 
country, he was only a stranger going the 
same way, but at their simple evening meal, 
in the breaking of bread, he revealed him- 
self as the risen Christ. To the fishermen on 
the lake he appeared only as a dim form on 
the beach, but in the dawn they saw him as 
the Lord, serving them with love. 

Everywhere we see the might of the risen 
Christ. Think of the marvelous power which 
wrought in the resurrection itself. If the 
story were legendary we should have minute 
details of all the circumstances. The Gospels 
are " most silent where myth and legend 
would be most garrulous." Yet the resur- 
rection was the most stupendous of all the 
miracles. The world never saw such an- 
other exercise of power as this sublime mas- 
tery of death when Jesus came from the 
grave. All the other of our Lord's mira- 
cles were only flashes of power. He changed 
water into wine. He made the blind see, 
the lame walk, the deaf hear. Bread for 
a few grew under his hand till it became 

[ 268 ] 



Cl^e "Beautt of ^eU^Conttol 

abundance for thousands. Other dead were 
restored, but in every instance they returned 
again to death. Great as these greatest 
miracles were they were little in comparison 
with this most wonderful of all his acts of 
power. He rose to die no more. 

As soon as Christ arose power began to go 
forth from him. Think of the change which 
came upon his friends as soon as they came 
to believe that their Lord was really alive 
again. They were transformed men. We 
know how despairing they were after Jesus 
died. All their hope was gone. Fear para- 
lyzed them. They hid behind barred doors. 
But when they saw the hands with the nail 
prints and believed, they were like new men. 
The power of the risen Christ passed into 
them. All who saw them and heard them, 
marveled at their boldness. When we com- 
pare the Peter of Good Friday with the 
Peter of Pentecost we see what the power of 
the risen Christ made of one man. So it was 
with all of them. Instead of being feeble, 
timid men, hiding away in the shadows, fol- 

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Cl^e powv of ti^e Eijsen tovti 

lowing their Master afar off, denying that 
they belonged to him, locking the doors for 
fear of assault or arrest, see how bold they 
became. They^ feared nothing. They were 
brave as lions. A tremendous energy was 
in their words. The power of the risen 
Christ was upon them. No trust in a dead 
Christ would have wrought such a marvel- 
ous change in those plain, unlettered, un- 
titled men. 

The power of the risen Christ is seen in 
the story of the Christian centuries. Is 
Christianity the work of a dead leader, a man 
who was not strong enough to overcome 
death? St. Paul tells us that if Christ did 
not rise there is no Christianity and no hope. 
" If Christ hath not been raised, then is our 
preaching vain, your faith is also vain, . • . 
ye are yet in your sins. Then also they that 
are fallen asleep in Christ have perished." 
If this is the final word about him, there is 
not a shadow of hope. 

^"Eat, drink and die, for we are souls bereaved. 
Of all the creatures under heaven's wide cope, 

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Cl^e "Beauti? of ^tU €onttol 

We are the most hopeless who had once most hope. 

And most beliefless that had most believed. 

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. 

As of the unjust, also of the just. 

Yea, of that Just One, too! 

It is the one sad gospel that is true, — 

Christ is not risen." 

But this is not the last word. Rather, it 
is this, — " Christ hath been raised. He is 
alive forevermore." The story of Chris- 
tianity is the story of the risen Christ. All 
that has been done he has done. His last 
promise to his disciples, as he sent them out, 
was, " Lo, I am with you always, even unto 
the end of the world." Just what did this 
promise mean.^^ Is Christ present with his 
friends in this world in a different way from 
that in which St. John or St. Paul is present 
in the church.? They are present in influ- 
ence. The world is sweeter because St. John 
lived in it. He was the apostle of love. 
There is a fragrance poured out by his name 
wherever it is spoken. St. Paul still teaches 
in all the churches. His words live wherever 
the New Testament goes. Is it only in this 
way that Christ's promise must be understood.'^ 

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Cl^e ^oWv of tl^e Mi^m JLotD 

There are some who tell us this, — that he is 
with his followers only in the memory of his 
life, work, and character, and not in any sense 
as a living person, to whom we may speak, 
who can help us. But the promise meant 
more than this when Jesus gave it to his 
friends. It meant that he, the risen Christ, 
would be with them, in actual, living, personal 
presence, always, all the days — that he 
would be their Companion, their Helper, their 
Friend. The things Christ in his ministry, 
before his death, " began to do," he has con- 
tinued to do through all the centuries since. 
The power of the risen Christ is seen wherever 
any good work is wrought. We read the 
wonderful story of his public ministry, how 
he went everywhere doing good, healing, help- 
ing, comforting, and we sometimes wish we 
could have lived in those days, to have re- 
ceived his help ; but the Christ is as really 
present in our community as he was in Judea 
and Galilee. We may have his touch, his 
cheer, his presence, as actually as if he were 
living in our home. 

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; Ci^e I3eaut^ of ^elf control 

It is interesting to read of the friendships 
of the Master when he was on the earth. He 
was the friendliest man that ever hved. A 
recent writer says, " The Son of Man was 
dowered at birth above the rest with the im- 
pulse and the power to love and minister. . . • 
His compassion for the multitude because 
they were distressed and scattered as sheep 
not having a shepherd, his charity for the 
outcast, the oppressed, and the weary, his 
affection for the Innocence of childhood, are 
among the tenderest and the sweetest chapters 
in the history of our race, and seem to have 
made the profoundest impression both upon 
those whose exceeding good fortune it was 
to see his human countenance, and upon the 
age that came after.'' If he is the risen Christ, 
and if he is actually living with us, he is just 
the same friend to us that he was to those 
among whom he lived then. He goes among 
the people now as he used to do in Galilee, 
He is the same in our homes of sorrow as 
he was in the home of Bethany. 

He had his personal friendships. Think 
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i [Cl^e poKx>u of ti^e M^m lotD 

what he was to Peter who was brought to 
him first as Simon, a man of many faults, 
undisciplined, unlettered, impetuous. This 
man of the fishing boats became under his 
new Master's training and influence the great 
apostle. The story of Peter shows what the 
friendship of Christ can do now with such 
a man, what it can make of the unlikeliest of 
us. Or think what the friendship of Christ 
did for John, who grew into such rare gentle- 
ness in his companionship, whose character 
ripened into manly beauty and into great 
richness and strength. It is possible to have 
the risen Christ for our friend to-day and to 
have his friendship do for us just what it 
did for Peter and John. The power of Christ 
is seen in Christian lives all over the world 
which have been transformed by his love and 
by his influence. 

Easter illustrates the work of the risen 
Christ in its marvelous power. The day 
leaves in true Christian hearts everywhere 
new aspirations, a new uplift of life, new 
revealings of hope. Easter sends a wave of 

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comfort over the world as it tells of the con- 
quest of death. It changes the mounds above 
the sleeping dead into sacred resting places 
of saints waiting for glory, 

"These ashes/too, this little dust. 
Our Father's care shall keep. 
Till the last angel rise and break 
The long and dreary sleep. 

"Then love's soft dew o'er\very eye 
Shall shed its mildest rays. 
And the long-silent dust shall burst 
With shouts of endless praise." 

But Easter does more. It reaches out and 

spreads a radiance over all sorrow. It tells 

of victory, not only over death, but over 

everything in which men seem to suffer defeat, 

over all grief, pain, and trial. The grain of 

wheat dies only that it may live. " If it die, 

it beareth much fruit." This is the great 

lesson of Christian life. Easter comes on 

only one day in the year, but it has its lesson 

for every day. We are continually coming 

up to graves in which we must lay away some 

fond hope, some joy, but from which the 

thing laid away rises again in newness of 

life and beauty. Every call for self-denial is 

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such a grave. Every call to a hard and costly 
duty is a seed which we bury in the ground, 
but which will grow into something rich and 
splendid. " You are called to give up a lux- 
ury," says Phillips Brooks, " and you do 
it. The little bit of comfortable living is 
quietly buried away underground. But that 
is not the last of it. The small indulgence 
which would have made your bodily life easier 
for a day or two undergoes some strange 
alteration in its burial, and comes out a spir- 
itual quality that blesses and enriches your 
soul forever." 

This is the wider truth of Easter. The 
only way to do the best and highest is 
through the losing of the lower. The rose 
leaf must be bruised to get its fragrance. 
Love must suffer to reveal its full meaning 
of beauty. The golden grain must be buried 
in service or sacrifice, that from its grave may 
rise that which is unseen and eternal. 

The secret of all this wondrous truth is 
the power of the risen Christ. These things 
are true because he died and rose again. 

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Coming to ti^e CnD 



^^Life^ we ^ve been long together 
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather, 
* T is hard to part when friends are dear; 
Perhaps H will cost a sigh or tear; 
Then steal away, give little warnings- 
Choose thine own time; 
Say not ' Good-night! ' but in some brighter clime 
Bid me * Good-morning! ' " 



XX 



Coming to tl^e CnH 




E are always coming to the 
end of something; nothing 
earthly is long-lived. Many 
things last but for a day; 
many, for only a moment. 
You look at the sunset clouds, and there is a 
glory in them which thrills your soul; you 
turn to call a friend to behold the splendor 
with you, and it has vanished, and a new 
splendor — as wondrous, though altogether 
different — is in its place. You cross a field 
on an early summer morning, and every leaf 
and every blade of grass is covered with 
dewdrops, which sparkle like millions of dia- 
monds as the first sunbeams fall on them ; but 
a few moments later you return, and not a 
dewdrop is to be seen. You walk through 
your garden to-day, and note its wondrous 
variety of flowers in bloom, with their mar- 
velous tints and their exquisite loveliness; 

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Ci^e I3eautt of ^elf* Control 

to-morrow you walk again along the same 
paths, and there is just as great variety 
and as rich beauty, but all is changed. 

So it is in all our personal experiences. 
Life is a kaleidoscope ; every moment the view 
changes. The beautiful things of one glance 
are missing at the next, while new things — 
just as lovely, though not the same — appear 
in their place. The joys we had yesterday 
we do not have to-day, though our hearts 
may be quite as happy now, with gladness 
just as pure and deep. In a sense, to most 
of us, life is routine, an endless repetition — 
the same tasks, the same duties, the same 
cares, day after day, year after year ; yet in 
this routine there is constant change. 

We meet new people, we read new books, we 
see new pictures, we learn new facts, while 
at the same time many of the old familiar 
things are continually dropping out of our 
lives. The face we saw yesterday we miss 
to-day, and there are new faces in the throng ; 
the songs we sang last year we do not sing 
this year ; the books we used to read with zest 

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Coming to tl^e cBnD 



we do not care for any longer ; the pleasures 
that once delighted us have no more charm 
for us ; the toys that meant so much to child- 
hood and were so real have no fascination 
whatever for manhood and womanhood; the 
happy days of youth, with their sports and 
games, their schools and studies, their friend- 
ships and visions, are left behind, though 
never forgotten, as we pass on into actual 
life with its harder tasks, its rougher paths, 
its heavier burdens, its deeper studies, its 
sterner realities. So we are ever coming to 
the end of old things and to the beginning 
of new things. We keep nothing long. 

This is true of our friendships. Our hearts 
are made to love and cling. Very early the 
little child begins to tie itself to others' lives 
by the subtle cords of aflfection. All through 
life we go on gathering friends and binding 
them to us by cords of varying strength, 
sometimes light as a gossamer thread and as 
easily broken, sometimes strong as life itself 
— the very knitting of soul to soul. Yet 
our friendships are ever changing. Some 

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Ci^c I3cautt of telecontrol 

of them we outgrow and leave behind as we 
pass from childhood and youth to maturity; 
some of them have only an external attach- 
ment, and easily fall off and are scarcely 
missed and leave no scar. 

In every true life there is an inner circle 
of loved ones who are bound to us by ties 
woven out of our heart's very fibres. The 
closest of these are the members of our own 
household. The child's first friend is the 
child's mother ; then comes the father ; then 
the other members of the family are taken 
into sacred clasp by the opening life. By 
and by the young heart reaches outside and 
chooses other friends from the great world 
of people and out of the multitude of passing 
associates, and binds them to itself with 
friendship's strongest cords. Thus all true 
men and true women come up to mature years 
clustered about by a circle of friends who 
are dear to them as their own life. Our 
debt to our life's pure and good friendships 
is incalculable; they make us what we are. 
The mother's heart is the child's first school- 

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Comfng to tl^e €nD 



room. The early home influences give their 
tints and hues to the whole after life ; a gentle 
home where only kindly words are spoken 
and loving thoughts and dispositions are 
cherished fills with tender beauty the lives 
that go out from its shelter. All early 
friendships print their own stamp on the 
ripening character. Our souls are like the 
sensitive plates which the photographer puts 
into his camera, which catch every image 
whose reflection falls upon them and hold 
it ready to be brought out in the finished 
picture. Says George Macdonald: 

** I think that nothing made is lost — 
That not a moon has ever shone. 
That not a cloud my eyes hath crossed, ■ 
But to my soul is gone; 

"That all the lost years garnered lie 
In this thy casket, my dim soul. 
And thou wilt, once, the key apply 
And show the shining whole.'* 

True in general, this is especially true of 
the pure friendships of our lives. None 
of the impressions that they make on our 
lives are ever lost; they sink away into our 

[279] 



k Ci^e I3eaut^ of ^elf^Control 

souls, and then reappear at length in our 
character. 

But even these tender and holy friendships 
we cannot keep forever; one by one they 
fall off or are torn out of our lives. There 
are many ways of losing friends. Sometimes, 
without explanation, without offence or a 
shadow of a reason which we know, without 
hint or warning given, our friend suddenly 
withdraws from us and goes his own way, 
and through life we never have hint or token 
of the old friendship. 

"Oh, what was the hour and the day. 

The moment, I lost you? 
I thought you were walking my way; 

I turned to accost you. 
And silence and emptiness met 

My word half unspoken." 

Some friends are lost to us, not by any 
sudden rupture, but by a slow and gradual 
falling apart which goes on imperceptibly 
through long periods, tie after tie unclasping 
until all are loosed, when hearts once knit 
together in holy union find themselves hope- 
lessly estranged. A little bird dropped a 

[280] 



Coming to t^t d^nD 



seed on a rock. The seed fell into a crevice 
and grew, and at length the great rock was 
rent asunder by the root of the tree that 
sprang up. So little seeds of alienation 
sometimes fall between two friends, and in 
the end produce a separation which rends 
their friendship and sunders them forever. 

"No sudden treason turns 
The long-accustomed loyalty to hate. 
But years bring weariness for sweet content; 
And fondness, daily sustenance of love. 
Which use should make a tribute easier paid. 
First grudged, and then withheld, the heart is starved; 
And, though compassion or remorseful thought 
Of happy days departed bring again 
The ancient tenderness in seeming flood. 
Not less it ebbs and ebbs till all is bare." 

Then, friends are lost through misunder- 
standings which in many cases a few honest 
words at first might have removed. The 
proverb says, " A whisperer separateth chief 
friends." Friends are lost, too, in the sharp 
competitions of business, in the keen rivalries 
of ambition; for love of money or of fame 
or of power or of special distinction many 
throw away holy friendships. 

[281] 



Cl^e I3eautt of telecontrol 

Friends are lost, too, by death. All 
through life the sad story of bereavement goes 
on. As the leaves are torn from the trees 
by the rude storm, so are friendships plucked 
from our lives by Death's remorseless hand. 
There Is something inexpressibly sad in the 
loneliness of old people who have survived the 
loss of nearly all their friends, and who stand 
almost entirely alone amid the gathering 
shadows of their life's eventide. Once they 
were rich in human affection. Children sat 
about their table and grew up in their happy 
home; other true hearts were drawn to them 
along the years. But one by one their 
children are gathered home into Grod's bosom, 
until all are gone. Other friends — some in 
one way, and some in another — are also re- 
moved. At last the husband or the wife is 
called away, and one only survives of the once 
happy pair, lonely and desolate amid the ruin 
of all earthly gladness and the tender memo- 
ries of lost joys. 

Were it not for the Christian's hope, these 
losses of friends along the years would be 

[282 ] 



Cottting to tl^e tn^ 



infinitely sad, without alleviation. But the 
wonderful grace of God comes not only with 
its revelation of after life, but with its present 
healing. God binds up his people's hearts 
in their sorrow and comforts them in their 
loneliness. The children and the friends who 
are gone are not lost; hand will clasp hand 
again and heart will clasp heart in inseparable 
reunion. The grave is only winter, and after 
winter comes spring with its wonderful resur- 
rections, in which everything beautiful that 
seemed lost comes again. 

"God does not give us new flowers every year: 
When the spring winds blow over the pleasant places, 
The same dear things lift up the same fair faces: 
The violet is here! 

" It all comes back, the odor, grace and hue — 
Each sweet relation of its life — repeated; 
No blank is left, no longing-for is cheated: 
It is the thing we knew. 

"So, after the death- winter, must it be — 
God will not set strange signs in heavenly places; 
The old love will look out from the old faces — 
My own, I shall have thee." 

We come to the end, also, of many of our 
life's visions and hopes as the years go on. 

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C]^e "Beauty of ^elf* Control 

Flowers are not the only things that fade; 
morning clouds are not the only things that 
pass away ; sunset splendors are not the only 
gorgeous pictures that vanish. What comes 
of all childhood's fancies, of youth's day- 
dreams, of manhood's and womanhood's 
vision fabrics? How many of them are ever 
realized? Life is full of illusions. Many of 
our ships that we send out to imaginary lands 
of wealth to bring back to us rich cargoes 
never return at all, or, if they do, only creep 
back empty, with torn sails and battered 
hulks. Disappointments come to all of us 
along life's course. Many of our ventures 
on life's sea are wrecked and never come 
back to port; many of our ardent hopes 
prove only brilliant bubbles that burst as 
we grasp them. 

Yet if we are living for the higher things 
— the things that are unseen and eternal — 
the shattering of our life's dreams and the 
failures of our earthly hopes are only ap- 
parent losses. The things we can see are 
but the shadows of things we cannot see. 

[284] 



Coming to tl^e cBnD 



We chase the shadow, supposing it to be a 
reahty ; it eludes us and we do not grasp 
it, but instead we grasp in our hand that 
invisible thing of which the visible was only 
the shadow. A young man has his vision of 
possible achievement and attainment; one by 
one, with toil and pain, yet with quenchless 
ardor, he follows them. All along his life to 
its close bright hopes shine before him, and 
he continues to press after them with un- 
wearying quest. Perhaps he does not realize 
any of them, and he comes to old age with 
empty hands — an unsuccessful man, the 
world says — yet all the while his faith in 
God has not faltered, and he has been gather- 
ing into his soul the treasures of spiritual 
conquest ; in his inner life he has been growing 
richer every day. 

Thus, God gives us friends, and our heart's 
tendrils twine about them; they stay with us 
for a time, and then leave us. Our loss is 
very sore, and we go out bereft and lonely 
along life's paths. But we have not lost all. 
Loving our friends drew out to ripeness the 

[285] 



Cl^e "Beautt of telecontrol 

possibilities of love in our own hearts ; then 
the friends were taken away, but the ripened 
love remains. Our hearts are empty, but our 
lives are larger. The illusions of faith and 
hope and love are but the falling away of the 
rude scaffolding used in erecting the building, 
that the beautiful temple itself may stand 
out in enduring splendor. 

We come close to the end of trials and 
sorrows. Every night has a morning, and, 
however dark it may be, we have only to 
wait a little while for the sun to rise, when 
light will chase away the gloom. Every black 
cloud that gathers in the sky and blots out 
the blue or hides the stars passes away ere 
long; and when it is gone there is no stain 
left on the blue and not a star's beam is 
quenched or even dimmed. So it is with life's 
pains and troubles. Sickness gives place to 
health. Grief, however bitter, is comforted 
by the tender comfort of divine love. Sorrow, 
even the sorest, passes away and joy comes 
again, not one glad note hushed, its music 
even enriched by its experience of sadness. 

[286] 



Comfng to tl^e cBnD 



"No note of sadness but shall melt 
In sweetest chord unguessed; 
No labor, all too pressing felt. 
But ends in quiet rest." 

There is another ending: we shall come to 
the end of life itself. We shall come to the 
close of our last day; we shall do our last 
piece of work, and take our last walk, and 
write our last letter, and sing our last song, 
and speak our last " Good-night " ; then to- 
morrow we shall be gone, and the places that 
have known us shall know us no more. What- 
ever other experiences we may have or may 
miss, we shall not miss dying. Every human 
path, through whatever scenes it may wan- 
der, must bend at last into the Valley of 
Shadows. 

Yet we ought not to think of death as 
calamity or disaster; if we are Christians, it 
will be the brightest day of our whole life 
when we are called to go away from earth to 
heaven. Work will then be finished, conflict 
will be over, sorrow will be past, death itself 
will be left behind, and life in its full, true, 
rich meaning will only really begin. 

[287] 



Cl^e 'Beautt of telecontrol 

True preparation for death is made when 
we close each day as if it were the last. We 
are never sure of to-morrow; we would leave 
nothing incomplete any night. Each single, 
separate little day should be a miniature life 
complete in itself, with nothing of duty left 
over. God gives us life by days, and with 
each day he gives its own allotment of duty — 
a portion of his plan to be wrought out, a 
fragment of his purpose to be accomplished 
by us. Says Faber, " Every hour comes with 
some little fagot of God's will fastened upon 
its back." Our mission is to find that bit 
of divine will and do it. Well-lived days 
make completed years, and the years well 
lived as they come make a life beautiful and 
full. In such a life no special preparation 
of any kind is needed; he who lives thus is 
always ready. Each day prepares for the 
next, and the last day prepares for glory. 
Susan Coolidge writes: 

*If I were told that I must die to-morrow — 

That the next sun 
Which sinks should bear me past all fear and sorrow 
For anyone, 

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Coming to ti^e CnD 



All the fight fought, all the short journey through — 
What should I do? 

** I do not think that I should shrink or falter. 

But just go on. 
Doing my work, nor change nor seek to alter 

Aught that is gone. 
But rise and move and love and smile and pray 

For one more day; 

"And, lying down at night for a last sleeping. 

Say in that ear 
Which hearkens ever, *Lord, within thy keeping 

How should I fear? 
And when to-morrow brings thee nearer still. 

Do thou thy wiU.'" ^ 

If we thus live, coming to the end of life 
need have no terror for us. Dying does not 
interrupt life for a moment. Death is not 
a wall cutting off the path, but a gate 
through which passing out of this world of 
shadows and unrealities we shall find ourselves 
in the immediate presence of the Lord and in 
the midst of the glories of the eternal home. 

We need have only one care — that we live 
well our one short life as we go on, that we 
love God and our neighbor, that we believe 
on Christ and obey his commandments, that 
we do each duty as it comes to our hand, and 

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. ci^e i^tmtv of ^elf* Control 

do It well. Then no sudden coming to the 
end will ever surprise us unprepared. Then, 
while glad to live as long as it may be God's 
will to leave us here, we shall welcome the 
gentle angel who comes with the golden joy^ 
to lead us to rest and home. 



[290] 



V 



SEP 23 1911 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Oct. 2005 

PreservationTechnologie; 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPEf s >-SERVATIO 
lllThomsonParkDnve 
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